鼎 → 无妄
Hexagram 50: The Cauldron → Hexagram 25: Innocence
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 3, 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 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 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
兵征大宛，北出玉門。與胡寇戰，平城道西。七月無糧，身幾不全。
The army campaigns against Dayuan, marching north through the Jade Gate. They battle the Hu brigands west of Pingcheng. In the seventh month, provisions are gone; the body is barely kept whole.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire over wind fills the cauldron, but thunder beneath heaven moves without design in Innocence. Troops march against Dayuan, exiting north through the Jade Gate Pass. They engage the Xiongnu in battle on the road west of Pingcheng. For seven months supplies run out, and bodies barely survive. This unmistakably references the Han dynasty campaigns in Central Asia — the Jade Gate (Yumen Pass) marked the empire's western frontier, and the Pingcheng siege recalls Emperor Gaozu's disastrous entrapment by the Xiongnu chief Modu in 200 BC. From The Cauldron to Innocence, the transformation is cruelly apt: the soldiers' suffering is not divine punishment but sheer mischance — innocence's dark side, where catastrophe strikes without moral cause and survival is a matter of luck, not virtue.
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