艮 → 乾
Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain → Hexagram 1: The Creative
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 4, 5).
Line 1
初六 艮其趾。无咎。利永貞。
Six at the beginning means: Keeping his toes still. No blame. Continued perseverance furthers.
Line 2
六二 艮其腓。不拯其隨。其心不快。
Six in the second place means: Keeping his calves still. He cannot rescue him whom he follows. His heart is not glad.
Line 4
六四 艮其身。无咎。
Six in the fourth place means: Keeping his trunk still. No blame.
Line 5
六五 艮其輔。言有序。悔亡。
Six in the fifth place means: Keeping his jaws still. The words have order. Remorse disappears.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
憂驚已除，禍不為災，安全以來。
Worry and alarm already removed; calamity does not become disaster. Safety arrives at last.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Twin mountains stand still, yet all worry dissolves into heaven's self-generating vigor. Alarm and dread have already departed; calamity does not become disaster, and safety arrives of its own accord. The verse reads like a diviner's reassurance after a period of anxiety: the threat was real, but its force is spent. From Keeping Still to the Creative, the doubled mountain gives way to doubled heaven. What was held in rigid stillness now releases as pure initiative. The mountain's restraint was never passive; it was the discipline that allowed heaven's energy to gather unseen, until the moment arrived to act. Safety here is not the absence of danger but the completion of a cycle in which stillness prepared the ground for sovereign motion.
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