小過 → 萃
Hexagram 62: Small Exceeding → Hexagram 45: Gathering Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 4, 5, 6).
Line 1
初六 飛鳥以凶。
Six at the beginning means: The bird meets with misfortune through flying.
Line 4
九四 无咎。弗過遇之。往厲必戒。勿用永貞。
Nine in the fourth place means: No blame. He meets him without passing by. Going brings danger. One must be on guard. Do not act. Be constantly persevering.
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.
Line 6
上六 弗遇過之。飛鳥離之。凶。是謂災眚。
Six at the top means: He passes him by, not meeting him. The flying bird leaves him. Misfortune. This means bad luck and injury.
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.
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