巽 → 乾
Hexagram 57: The Gentle Wind → Hexagram 1: The Creative
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 4).
Line 1
初六 進退。利武人之貞。
Six at the beginning means: In advancing and in retreating, The perseverance of a warrior furthers.
Line 4
六四 悔亡。田獲三品。
Six in the fourth place means: Remorse vanishes. During the hunt Three kinds of game are caught.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
采唐沬卿,要期桑中。失信不會,憂思約帶。
Gathering herbs at the marsh's edge; a tryst promised beneath the mulberries. Faith broken, the meeting missed; sorrow tightens my sash.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind upon wind, the doubled Gentle, transforms into doubled heaven: penetrating influence becomes self-generating initiative. The verse quotes the Shijing tryst poem 'Sang Zhong': gathering tang-grass at Mei, arranging a rendezvous among the mulberries. But the lover breaks his promise and never appears. Left waiting, the abandoned one wastes away with longing, tightening her sash as grief thins her waist. The broken appointment inverts the Shijing's romantic charge into bitter disappointment. From The Gentle to The Creative, the transformation is sharply ironic: wind's persistent influence should build toward heaven's tireless strength, yet here persuasion fails at the most intimate level. The one who cannot keep faith with a single heart will never generate the self-renewing power that heaven demands.
The Six Lines app includes all 4,096 Yilin verses, each with original ink brush artwork and full commentary. Download on the App Store