鼎 → 觀
Hexagram 50: The Cauldron → Hexagram 20: Contemplation
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 4, 5).
Line 2
九二 鼎有實。我仇有疾。不我能即。吉。
Nine in the second place means: There is food in the ting. My comrades are envious, But they cannot harm me. Good fortune.
Line 3
九三 鼎耳革。其行塞。雉膏不食。方雨虧悔。終吉。
Nine in the third place means: The handle of the ting is altered. One is impeded in his way of life. The fat of the pheasant is not eaten. Once rain falls, remorse is spent. Good fortune comes in the end.
Line 4
九四 鼎折足。覆公餗。其形渥。凶。
Nine in the fourth place means: The legs of the ting are broken. The prince's meal is spilled And his person is soiled. Misfortune. A man has a difficult and responsible task to which he is not adequate. Moreover, he does not devote himself to it with all his strength but goes about with inferior people; therefore the execution of the work fails. In this way he also incurs personal opprobrium. Confucius says about this line: "Weak character coupled with honored place, meager knowledge with large plans, limited powers with heavy responsibility, will seldom escape disaster. "
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
秋隼冬翔，數被嚴霜。甲兵充庭，萬物不生。雞釜夜鳴，民擾大驚。
The autumn falcon soars in winter, struck repeatedly by bitter frost. Arms and armor fill the courtyard; the ten thousand things do not grow. The rooster cries from the cauldron at night; the people are thrown into great alarm.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire over wind fills the cauldron, but wind sweeps across the earth in bleak Contemplation. An autumn falcon soars through winter skies, battered by repeated frost. Soldiers fill the courtyard, and nothing grows. Then the strangest omen: a rooster crows inside the cooking pot at night, and the people panic in terror. Livestock prophesying from within the cauldron — the very vessel of civilization producing unnatural sounds — signals a world turned upside down. Militarization has sterilized the land; nature itself protests through monstrous portents. From The Cauldron to Contemplation, the transformation demands that the observer see clearly what has gone wrong. Wind over earth surveys the damage: the cauldron meant to nourish now breeds horror.
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