小過 → 家人
Hexagram 62: Small Exceeding → Hexagram 37: The Family
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 3, 5).
Line 3
九三 弗過防之。從或戕之。凶。
Nine in the third place means: If one is not extremely careful, Somebody may come up from behind and strike him. Misfortune.
Line 5
六五 密雲不雨。自我西郊。公弋取彼在穴。
Six in the fifth place means: Dense clouds, No rain from our western territory. The prince shoots and hits him who is in the cave.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
不直莊公，與我爭訟。媒伯无禮，自令塞壅。
Duke Zhuang dealt unjustly, entering suit against me; the matchmaker violated propriety, bringing this blockage upon himself.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder rumbles above the mountain, but justice is absent. One accuses Duke Zhuang of impropriety, and litigation erupts. The matchmaker-elder acts without proper rites, and the result is obstruction and blockage. The verse likely involves a Spring and Autumn period dispute where a lord's conduct in marriage arrangements violated protocol — Duke Zhuang (莊公) of one state entangled in litigation over propriety, while the go-between who should have maintained decorum instead compounds the disorder. From Small Exceeding to the Family, the mountain's thunder transforms into wind issuing from fire — words that carry warmth and constancy. The verse inverts the Family ideal: where there should be harmonious domestic order, litigation and improper matchmaking produce only stagnation.
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