蒙 → 比
Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly → Hexagram 8: Holding Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 5, 6).
Line 2
九二 包蒙吉。納婦吉。子克家。
Nine in the second place means: To bear with fools in kindliness brings good fortune. To know how to take women Brings good fortune. The son is capable of taking charge of the household.
Line 5
六五 童蒙。吉。
Six in the fifth place means: Childlike folly brings good fortune.
Line 6
上九 擊蒙。不利為寇。利禦寇。
Nine at the top means: In punishing folly It does not further one To commit transgressions. The only thing that furthers Is to prevent transgressions.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
豕生魚魴，鼠舞庭堂。奸佞施毒，上下昏荒，君失其國。
Pigs give birth to bream; rats dance in the courtyard. Treachery and flattery spread their poison; above and below grow dim and reckless. The lord loses his state.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
A spring beneath the mountain turns foul as the natural order inverts. Pigs give birth to fish, rats dance in the courtyard — monstrous omens of a world turned upside down. Treacherous ministers spread their poison while ruler and court sink into confusion; the lord loses his state. In Han-dynasty omen theory, animals acting against their nature signal that governance has gone catastrophically wrong. From Youthful Folly to Holding Together, the transformation is deeply ironic: the hexagram of union and allegiance is reached through its perversion. Water upon the earth should nurture bonds between ruler and vassal, but when those bonds form around flattery and poison rather than virtue, unity itself becomes the instrument of ruin.
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