家人 → 旅
Hexagram 37: The Family → Hexagram 56: The Wanderer
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 5).
Line 5
九五 王假有家。勿恤吉。
Nine in the fifth place means: As a king he approaches his family. Fear not. Good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
山陵丘墓，魂魄室屋。精光竭盡，長臥无覺。
Hills and barrows, tombs and graves; the dwelling place of souls. The vital light is spent entirely; he lies long in sleep without waking.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind from fire once animated the household, but now all vital energy has departed. Mounds and hillside tombs become the soul's dwelling; the spirit's light is utterly exhausted. The body lies in eternal sleep, never to wake. The verse is a meditation on death stripped of all consolation — no immortality, no reunion, no transformation, just the quiet extinction of consciousness. The tomb as 'soul's chamber' inverts the living household: the family home becomes a burial mound. From The Family to The Wanderer, fire burns atop the mountain as the traveler passes through without settling. The Wanderer is always in transit, never at home. Death is the ultimate wandering — the soul departs its familiar dwelling and enters a journey from which there is no return, the light extinguished and the family left behind.
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