旅 → 革
Hexagram 56: The Wanderer → Hexagram 49: Revolution
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 4, 5, 6).
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 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
剗迹惡人，使德不通。炎旱為災，年穀大傷。
Cutting down the traces of wicked men, so virtue cannot prevail. Scorching drought brings disaster; the year's grain is greatly ruined.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire on the mountain, and wicked men have trampled down the traces of virtue until goodness can no longer circulate. Scorching drought compounds the catastrophe — the harvest is devastated, the grain of the year ruined. The verse links moral corruption to natural disaster: when evil men erase the pathways of virtue, heaven responds with punishing heat. The connection is not causal but resonant — the pattern of obstruction repeats at every level. From The Wanderer to Revolution, fire within the lake, two forces in transformative tension. Revolution promises renewal through radical change, but the verse shows the conditions that make revolution necessary: when moral channels are so thoroughly blocked that even heaven's nourishment cannot flow, only upheaval can clear the way.
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