中孚 → 頤
Hexagram 61: Inner Truth → Hexagram 27: Nourishment
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 2, 5).
Line 2
九二 鳴鶴在陰。其子和之。我有好爵。吾與爾靡之。
Nine in the second place means: A crane calling in the shade. Its young answers it. I have a good goblet. I will share it with you.
Line 5
九五 有孚攣如。无咎。
Nine in the fifth place means: He possesses truth, which links together. No blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
三雞啄粟,八雛從食。飢鳶卒擊,失亡兩叔。
Three hens peck grain; eight chicks follow to feed. A hungry kite strikes suddenly; two are lost.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind stirs above the lake as three hens peck at grain while eight chicks follow to feed. Then a hungry kite swoops suddenly, and two of the young are lost. The scene begins in pastoral calm — a mother hen with her brood, a picture of nourishment and care. The kite's strike shatters the idyll: the predator takes precisely the vulnerable, and two chicks vanish. From Inner Truth to Nourishment, sincerity meets the mountain above thunder — the image of careful speech and measured sustenance. The verse warns that nourishment without vigilance invites predation. The mountain must guard what the thunder stirs to life; feeding in the open, unprotected, turns abundance into an invitation for loss.
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