旅 → 升
Hexagram 56: The Wanderer → Hexagram 46: Pushing Upward
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 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 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 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
異國殊俗,情不相得。金木為仇,百戰檀穀。
Foreign lands, alien customs; feelings that find no accord. Metal and wood as mortal enemies; a hundred battles in the sandalwood valley.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire on the mountain, and the traveler enters a land of alien customs where feelings cannot connect. Metal and wood are natural enemies — they war endlessly at a place called Tangu. The verse describes the fundamental incompatibility between foreign peoples and foreign ways: no common ground, no shared sentiment, only perpetual friction. 'A hundred battles at Tangu' suggests an exhausting, inconclusive frontier conflict. From The Wanderer to Pushing Upward, wood rises through the earth in quiet, steady growth. Yet the verse denies this progress: when the elements themselves are at war, no upward movement is possible. The wanderer in hostile territory cannot take root because the very soil resists his nature.
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