Hexagram 38: Opposition → Hexagram 27: Nourishment

Opposition
Fire / Lake
Nourishment
Mountain / Thunder
Changing LinesStable Lines

Changing Lines

This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 2, 4).

Line 2

九二 遇主于巷。无咎。

meeting (with)
zhǔ(a
in
xiàngalley
no
jiùblame

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。

kuíestranged
(and) (all) alone
meet
yuán(a
(gentle)man
jiāoexchange
(in
(the) difficulty
(is) not
jiù(a) wrong(ness)

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.

Trigram Changes

Upper TrigramFire MountainThe Clinging → Keeping Still
Lower TrigramLake ThunderThe Joyous → The Arousing

Yilin Verse

鬼泣哭枉,悲傷無後。甲子昧爽,殷人絕祀。

Ghosts weep and cry out in grief; sorrow at having no posterity. On the jiazi day at dawn's first light; the Yin people's sacrifices are cut off.

— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE

Commentary

Fire above the lake, and ancestral ghosts weep in wronged anguish, grieving the extinction of their line. On a jiazi morning at dawn's first grey light, the Yin people's sacrificial rites cease forever. The verse points unmistakably to the fall of the Shang dynasty: 'jiazi at dawn' (甲子昧爽) echoes the Shangshu's 'Mushi' chapter, which opens with King Wu's dawn address at Muye on the jiazi day that ended Shang. The ghosts who weep are Shang's ancestral spirits, lamenting that their descendants have been severed and no one remains to perform the rites. From Opposition to Nourishment, the mountain stands above thunder — careful words, measured sustenance. The transformation from severed rites to Nourishment underscores that spiritual feeding, once cut, leaves only ghostly lamentation.

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