需 → 恆
Hexagram 5: Waiting → Hexagram 32: Duration
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 4, 5).
Line 1
初九 需于郊。利用恆。无咎。
Nine at the beginning means: Waiting in the meadow. It furthers one to abide in what endures. No blame.
Line 4
六四 需于血。出自穴。
Six in the fourth place means: Waiting in blood. Get out of the pit.
Line 5
九五 需于酒食。貞吉。
Nine in the fifth place means: Waiting at meat and drink. Perseverance brings good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
蝙螺生子，深目黑醜。雖飾相就，眾人莫取。
The bat gives birth; the offspring are deep-eyed and ugly. Though adorned and dressed up for display, no one will take them.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Clouds above heaven harden into thunder and wind in Duration — the persistence of fixed patterns. A bat-snail bears offspring with deep-set eyes, dark and ugly. Though adorned and brought forward to be matched, no one will have them. The creature's grotesque progeny cannot be beautified by cosmetics or social effort; the defect is inherent and enduring. Duration here means the persistence of an unappealing condition that no amount of surface treatment can alter. From Waiting to Duration, patient nourishment calcifies into unchanging form: what was meant to develop instead fixes in place, and the thunder-wind pattern that should sustain becomes the repetition of the same unlovely shape, generation after generation.
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