旅 → 大壯
Hexagram 56: The Wanderer → Hexagram 34: Great Power
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 4, 6).
Line 2
六二 旅即次。懷其資。得童僕貞。
Six in the second place means: The wanderer comes to an inn. He has his property with him. He wins the steadfastness of a young servant.
Line 4
九四 旅于處。得其資斧。我心不快。
Nine in the fourth place means: The wanderer rests in a shelter. He obtains his property and an ax. My heart is not glad.
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
獨夫老婦，不能生子，鰥寡俱處。
A solitary old man and an aged widow, unable to bear children; widower and widow dwelling together.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire on the mountain, and below a solitary old man and a solitary old woman share a dwelling but cannot produce an heir. Alone, widowed, they keep each other company in barren coexistence. The verse distills desolation into three lines: no future, no continuity, only the companionship of mutual decline. From The Wanderer to Great Power, thunder roars above heaven in a display of overwhelming yang energy. Yet the verse presents the absolute negation of that power — a union that generates nothing, strength that cannot propagate. Great Power misapplied produces only noise without issue. The wanderer paired with the wrong partner finds that even proximity cannot substitute for genuine generative capacity.
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