姤 → 比
Hexagram 44: Coming to Meet → Hexagram 8: Holding Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 4, 6).
Line 2
九二 包有魚。无咎。不利賓。
Nine in the second place means: There is a fish in the tank. No blame. Does not further guests.
Line 3
九三 臀无膚。其行次且。厲。无大咎。
Nine in the third place means: There is no skin on his thighs, And walking comes hard. If one is mindful of the danger, No great mistake is made.
Line 4
九四 包无魚。起凶。
Nine in the fourth place means: No fish in the tank. This leads to misfortune.
Line 6
上九 姤其角。吝。无咎。
Nine at the top means: He comes to meet with his horns. Humiliation. No blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
鹿畏人匿，俱入深谷。短命不長，為虎所得，死於牙腹。
The deer, fearing men, hides; both plunge into the deep valley. Its life cut short; seized by the tiger, it dies between fang and belly.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind beneath heaven flushes prey from cover. A deer, frightened by human presence, plunges deep into a mountain valley seeking refuge — but its short life finds no safety there. The tiger waits in the ravine, and the deer dies between fang and belly. The encounter that Gou initiates here is fatal: fleeing one danger drives the creature straight into another. From Coming to Meet to Holding Together, water upon earth suggests natural bonding — yet this is the dark inversion, where predator and prey are 'held together' in the intimacy of the kill. The verse warns that panic-driven flight without discernment merely exchanges one peril for a worse one.
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