睽 → 復
Hexagram 38: Opposition → Hexagram 24: Return
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 4, 6).
Line 2
九二 遇主于巷。无咎。
Nine in the second place means: One meets his lord in a narrow street. No blame.
Line 4
九四 睽孤。遇元夫。交孚。厲无咎。
Nine in the fourth place means: Isolated through opposition, One meets a like-minded man With whom one can associate in good faith. Despite the danger, no blame.
Line 6
上九 睽孤。見豕負塗。載鬼一車。先張之弧。後說之弧。匪寇婚媾。往遇雨則吉。
Nine at the top means: Isolated through opposition, One sees one's companion as a pig covered with dirt, As a wagon full of devils. First one draws a bow against him, then one lays the bow aside. He is not a robber; he will woo at the right time. As one goes, rain falls; then good fortune comes.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
兩目失明,日奪无光。脛足跛踦,不可以行,頓於丘傍。
Both eyes have lost their sight; the sun is robbed of light. Shins and feet lame and stumbling; he cannot walk, and collapses by the hillside.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire above the lake, vision and movement both extinguished. Both eyes lose their sight, the sun stripped of its light; the legs are lame and uneven, unable to walk, and one collapses beside a barren hill. The verse systematically disables every capacity for agency: sight, which connects one to the world, is gone; mobility, which connects one to a destination, is gone. What remains is utter helplessness, stranded at the roadside. From Opposition to Return, thunder stirs within the earth, a single yang line re-enters at the bottom. The transformation offers a slender thread of hope: even in total darkness and immobility, the primal impulse of renewal begins underground, invisible and unbidden. Return begins precisely when all external resources have been exhausted.
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