鼎 → 乾
Hexagram 50: The Cauldron → Hexagram 1: The Creative
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 5).
Line 1
初六 鼎顛趾。利出否。得妾以其子。无咎。
Six at the beginning means: A ting with legs upturned. Furthers removal of stagnating stuff. One takes a concubine for the sake of her son. No blame.
Line 5
六五 鼎黃耳金鉉。利貞。
Six in the fifth place means: The ting has yellow handles, golden carrying rings. Perseverance furthers.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
頃筐卷耳，憂不得傷。心思故人，悲慕失母。
Tilting the basket, gathering earwort; sorrow does not become a wound. The heart thinks of old friends; in grief and longing, one mourns a lost mother.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire over wind feeds the cauldron; heaven doubled generates inexhaustible creative force. A woman gathers cocklebur with a tilted basket but cannot fill it — her mind is elsewhere, longing for someone far away. This echoes the Shijing ode 'Juan Er,' where a wife's distracted herb-picking mirrors her ache for an absent husband. 'Worry does not wound,' the verse insists: grief is real but not fatal, sorrow is carried rather than crushed beneath. The longing for a '故人' — an old companion, perhaps a departed mother — deepens the ache into mourning. From The Cauldron to The Creative, private grief transmutes into self-sustaining resilience. What the cauldron refines, heaven's ceaseless motion carries forward: the mourner endures because feeling itself is a form of strength.
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