蒙 → 未濟
Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly → Hexagram 64: Before Completion
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 4).
Line 4
六四 困蒙。吝。
Six in the fourth place means: Entangled folly bring humiliation.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
山林麓藪，非人所往。鳥獸無禮，使我心苦。
Mountain forest, foothill marsh; not where people go. Birds and beasts lack propriety; this makes my heart bitter.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
A spring beneath the mountain wanders into untamed wilderness. Mountains, forests, foothills, and marshes — places no human frequents. Birds and beasts know no propriety, and this makes the heart bitter. The verse deposits the traveler at the uttermost edge of civilization, where the social codes that sustain human life simply do not exist. Animals obey no rites; the world here is raw and indifferent. From Youthful Folly to Before Completion, fire floats above water without the two elements ever meeting. The naif has arrived at the point where nothing is finished, nothing is ordered, and the very categories of human meaning have yet to be established. This is not tragedy but pre-civilization: the bitter starting point from which all culture must be built.
The Six Lines app includes all 4,096 Yilin verses, each with original ink brush artwork and full commentary. Download on the App Store