艮 → 蒙
Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain → Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 2, 3).
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 3
九三 艮其限。列其夤。厲熏心。
Nine in the third place means: Keeping his hips still. Making his sacrum stiff. Dangerous. The heart suffocates.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
邑將為虛，居之憂危。
The town shall become a ruin; to dwell there brings worry and peril.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Twin mountains stand still as the settlement empties into ruin. The town is about to become a wasteland; those who dwell there live in dread. The verse is starkly brief — two lines that compress an entire cycle of civic decline into a single image. From Keeping Still to Youthful Folly, doubled mountain yields to water emerging beneath a mountain. The spring that should nourish instead erodes from below. Stillness that once meant stability now means stagnation: no trade, no fresh blood, no renewal. The mountain above the spring suggests that wisdom exists somewhere beneath the surface, but folly prevails because no one has the will to seek it. A community frozen in place becomes its own ghost.
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