解 → 師
Hexagram 40: Deliverance → Hexagram 7: The Army
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 4).
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
推車上山，力不能任。顛蹶蹉跌，傷我中心。
Pushing a cart uphill, strength unequal to the task. Stumbling and falling, tripping and sliding; it wounds my very heart.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder over water becomes earth concealing water — the army's hidden discipline. Pushing a cart uphill, strength fails. Stumbling and tripping, the traveler injures his very heart. The image is visceral: a task beyond capacity undertaken alone, with no troops or structure to support it. From Deliverance to The Army, the transformation highlights the gap between individual effort and collective power. Water hidden within the earth can marshal vast forces; a lone person pushing a cart up a mountain cannot. The release from one hardship has led to another, but this time the verse implies a remedy — disciplined organization, not raw willpower, is what the situation demands.
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