解 → 升
Hexagram 40: Deliverance → Hexagram 46: Pushing Upward
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 3, 4).
Line 3
六三 負且乘。致寇至。貞吝。
Six in the third place means: If a man carries a burden on his back And nonetheless rides in a carriage, He thereby encourages robbers to draw near. Perseverance leads to humiliation.
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.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
賊仁傷德，天怒不福。斬刈宗社，失其本域。
Harming benevolence, wounding virtue — heaven rages and withholds its blessing. The ancestral shrine is cut down and razed; the domain itself is lost.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder over water rises into earth with wind below — the gradual ascent of Pushing Upward. But this ascent is aborted: harming benevolence and wounding virtue provokes heaven's wrath. The ancestral temple is cut down, and one loses one's homeland. The verse describes a ruler whose cruelty and impiety destroy the very foundations of his state — the zongmiao (ancestral shrine) that legitimizes his rule. From Deliverance to Pushing Upward, the irony is complete: the hexagram promises steady growth through accumulated virtue, but the verse shows its negation. When the one who should ascend instead 'hacks at benevolence,' the tree grows downward into its own grave. Upward momentum requires moral root.
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