旅 → 屯
Hexagram 56: The Wanderer → Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 3, 5, 6).
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 5
六五 射雉。一矢亡。終以譽命。
Six in the fifth place means: He shoots a pheasant. It drops with the first arrow. In the end this brings both praise and office.
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
眾鳥所聚，中有大怪，九身无頭。魂驚魄去，不可以居。
Where the flock gathers, amid them lurks a great horror: nine bodies without a head. The soul is startled, the spirit flees; one cannot dwell there.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire on the mountain reveals a gathering of birds harboring something monstrous within — a creature with nine bodies but no head. The image is nightmarish: what appears to be a flock conceals a headless abomination, and the soul flees in terror. This dwelling is unfit for habitation. The 'nine bodies without a head' may allude to a state with many factions but no central authority, a polity that has fragmented beyond recognition. From The Wanderer to Difficulty at the Beginning, the traveler stumbles into primordial chaos — thunder beneath gathering storm-clouds. Yet where Difficulty at the Beginning normally promises new birth through perseverance, this verse offers only horror: the new beginning is stillborn, its multiplicity monstrous rather than fertile.
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