旅 → 比
Hexagram 56: The Wanderer → Hexagram 8: Holding Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 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 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
烏合卒會，與惡相得。鴟鴞相酬，為心所賊。
A rabble assembled by chance, finding kinship with the wicked. Owls toast one another; the heart is its own undoing.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire on the mountain illuminates a rabble gathering below. A mob assembles like crows — disorderly, opportunistic, held together only by shared malice. Owls toast one another in sinister fellowship, their hearts breeding treachery. The 'crow-gathered soldiers' (烏合之眾) became a lasting idiom for an undisciplined force united by circumstances rather than principle. The owls exchanging courtesies recalls the Shijing ode where the owl threatens the nest — false amity concealing predatory intent. From The Wanderer to Holding Together, the verse warns that not all bonds are wholesome. Water on the earth draws everything toward alliance, but alliance with the wicked compounds rather than cures the wanderer's displacement. Proximity to evil corrodes from within.
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