小過 → 萃
Hexagram 62: Small Exceeding → Hexagram 45: Gathering Together
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
二人異路，東趍西步。十里之外，不相知處。
Two people on different roads; one hastens east, one steps west; ten li apart, neither knows where the other dwells.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder rumbles above the mountain, but two people take different roads — one heading east, the other stepping west. Beyond ten miles, neither knows where the other has gone. The verse is a study in divergence: no quarrel, no dramatic rupture, just two paths that fork and never reconverge. The ten-mile radius marks the boundary of knowability in a world without modern communication — once beyond it, one simply vanishes from the other's awareness. From Small Exceeding to Gathering, the mountain's thunder transforms into the lake gathered upon the earth — community assembled. The verse is Gathering's shadow: where Gathering pulls people together toward a shared center, here centrifugal motion scatters them beyond mutual recognition. The gathering that should have happened never forms.
The Six Lines app includes all 4,096 Yilin verses, each with original ink brush artwork and full commentary. Download on the App Store