解 → 坎
Hexagram 40: Deliverance → Hexagram 29: The Abysmal Water
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 4, 5).
Line 4
九四 解而拇。朋至斯孚。
Nine in the fourth place means: Deliver yourself from your great toe. Then the companion comes, And him you can trust.
Line 5
六五 君子維有解。吉。有孚于小人。
Six in the fifth place means: If only the superior man can deliver himself, It brings good fortune. Thus he proves to inferior men that he is in earnest.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
失恃无友，嘉耦出走，傫如喪狗。
Without support, without friends; even his good companion has fled. Weary and downcast, like a homeless dog.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder over water plunges into doubled water — the repeated abyss. Losing one's support, bereft of friends, even one's spouse flees. Dejected like a stray dog — the verse alludes to Confucius's famous description when he arrived at Zheng and was separated from his disciples. Someone told Zigong that a man stood by the east gate 'looking like a stray dog,' and Confucius laughed, saying 'That fits perfectly.' From Deliverance to The Abysmal, the release from one peril drops directly into another. Water upon water offers no shore; the freed wanderer finds only deeper isolation and the humiliation of utter abandonment.
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