旅 → 坤
Hexagram 56: The Wanderer → Hexagram 2: The Receptive
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 6).
Line 1
初六 旅瑣瑣。斯其所取災。
Six at the beginning means: If the wanderer busies himself with trivial things, He draws down misfortune upon himself.
Line 3
九三 旅焚其次。喪其童僕。貞厲。
Nine in the third place means: The wanderer's inn burns down. He loses the steadfastness of his young servant. Danger.
Line 6
上九 鳥焚其巢。旅人先笑後號咷。喪牛于易。凶。
Nine at the top means: The bird's nest burns up. The wanderer laughs at first, Then must needs lament and weep. Through carelessness he loses his cow. Misfortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
人无定法,綬降牛出,虵雄走趨。陽不制陰,宜其家國。
Men lack fixed principles; the seal descends, the ox escapes, the male serpent runs forth. When yang cannot restrain yin, such becomes the state of home and country.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire on the mountain sweeps across rootless terrain, and all governance dissolves into chaos. When people abandon proper standards, seals of office drop from their cords and oxen wander free; serpents usurp the dominant position. The verse invokes the ancient warning against yin overwhelming yang — the 'hen crowing at dawn' from the Book of Documents, signaling a household where authority has been inverted. Yet the final line reads with bitter irony: 'fitting indeed for such a house and state.' From The Wanderer to Receptive, the traveler who abandons structure encounters pure earth without heaven's ordering principle. The Receptive thrives through devoted following, but when yang fails to lead, receptivity becomes mere vacancy, and the state collapses into formlessness.
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