艮 → 解
Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain → Hexagram 40: Deliverance
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 4, 6).
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.
Line 4
六四 艮其身。无咎。
Six in the fourth place means: Keeping his trunk still. No blame.
Line 6
上九 敦艮吉。
Nine at the top means: Noblehearted keeping still. Good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
三十无室，寄宿桑中。上宮長女，不得來同，使我失期。
At thirty, without a home, lodging among the mulberries. The eldest daughter of the upper palace cannot come to join me, causing me to miss our time.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Twin mountains stand still, and a man of thirty without a household lodges among the mulberries. The elder daughter of the upper palace cannot come to him, causing him to miss his appointed time. The phrase 'sangzhong' (桑中) echoes the Shijing ode about illicit trysts beneath the mulberry trees. The 'upper palace elder daughter' (上宮長女) may allude to the song's place of assignation. From Keeping Still to Deliverance, mountain yields to thunder above water — the storm that breaks the impasse. Yet the verse denies that release: the woman does not come, the period passes, and the man remains stuck among the mulberries. Deliverance promises that obstacles dissolve, but here the obstacle is absence itself — what never arrives cannot be unblocked.
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