漸 → 頤
Hexagram 53: Development → Hexagram 27: Nourishment
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 5).
Line 1
初六 鴻漸于干。小子厲有言。無咎。
Six at the beginning means: The wild goose gradually draws near the shore. The young son is in danger. There is talk. No blame.
Line 3
九三 鴻漸于陸。夫征不復。婦孕不育。凶。利禦寇。
Nine in the third place means: The wild goose gradually draws near the plateau. The man goes forth and does not return. The woman carries a child but does not bring it forth. Misfortune. It furthers one to fight off robbers.
Line 5
九五 鴻漸于陵。婦三歲不孕。終莫之勝。吉。
Nine in the fifth place means: The wild goose gradually draws near the summit. For three years the woman has no child. In the end nothing can hinder her. Good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
一尋百節，綢繆相結。其指詰屈，不能解脫。
A single length, a hundred knots; tightly, densely bound together. The fingers twist and cramp; unable to break free.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind over mountain shifts to mountain over thunder: gradual development enters the constriction of Nourishment. A rope of one xun in length has a hundred knots, tangled and knotted beyond reckoning. The fingers twist and cramp, unable to free themselves. The image is claustrophobic: what should flow smoothly has become impossibly entangled, and every attempt at release only tightens the bind. From Development to Nourishment, the mountain rests upon thunder, the jaw that must chew carefully. Nourishment demands discrimination in what one takes in and gives out, but here the rope has overwhelmed the hands. Gradual progress has knotted into complexity that defies unraveling. The verse warns that patient accumulation, without periodic simplification, can bind the very hands that built it.
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