豐 → 頤
Hexagram 55: Abundance → Hexagram 27: Nourishment
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 6).
Line 3
九三 豐其沛。日中見沬。折其右肱。无咎。
Nine in the third place means: The underbrush is of such abundance That the small stars can be seen at noon. He breaks his right arm. No blame.
Line 4
九四 豐其蔀。日中見斗。遇其夷主。吉。
Nine in the fourth place means: The curtain is of such fullness That the polestars can be seen at noon. He meets his ruler, who is of like kind. Good fortune.
Line 6
上六 豐其屋。蔀其家。闚其戶。闃其无人。三歲不覿。凶。
Six at the top means: His house is in a state of abundance. He screens off his family. He peers through the gate And no longer perceives anyone. For three years he sees nothing. Misfortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
慈母望子，遙思不已。久客外野，我心悲苦。
A loving mother watches for her son, longing ceaselessly from afar. Long a stranger in distant wilds, my heart is full of bitter grief.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder and fire illuminate Abundance, yet the verse turns to a mother's sorrow. A loving mother gazes into the distance, thinking of her son without rest. He has been a traveler in far-off wilds for so long; her heart aches with grief. The image of the mother watching the horizon is among the most universal in Chinese poetry — the parent left behind while the child ventures into an uncertain world. From Abundance to Nourishment, mountain above thunder: the verse captures the inversion of nourishment's natural flow. Nourishment means sustaining life carefully through speech and food, yet here the one who nourishes is herself starved of the presence she most needs. The mountain stands still above the thunder of her longing, and no feast can fill that emptiness.
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