睽 → 旅
Hexagram 38: Opposition → Hexagram 56: The Wanderer
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 4).
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 3
六三 見輿曳。其牛掣。其人天且劓。无初有終。
Six in the third place means: One sees the wagon dragged back, The oxen halted, A man's hair and nose cut off. Not a good beginning, but a good end.
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.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
響像无形，骨體不成。微行衰索，消滅無名。
Echoes and reflections without form; flesh and bone never take shape. Faint and declining, fading away; extinguished and nameless.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire above the lake, and what should be visible dissolves into nothing. Echoes without form, a skeleton without flesh — the body never coalesces into anything tangible. Activity dwindles to a thread, withering and fraying, until the name itself is extinguished without trace. The verse describes a process of radical dematerialization: not destruction but non-formation, as though existence itself failed to take hold. From Opposition to The Wanderer, fire burns upon the mountain, and the gentleman applies punishments with careful clarity, never prolonging imprisonment. The transformation from formlessness to wandering suggests that what cannot take root in one place must drift — the wanderer at least has a body, however transient, while this verse depicts something that never even achieved that much.
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