小過 → 歸妹
Hexagram 62: Small Exceeding → Hexagram 54: The Marrying Maiden
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 4, 6).
Line 2
六二 過其祖。遇其妣。不及其君。遇其臣。无咎。
Six in the second place means: She passes by her ancestor And meets her ancestress. He does not reach his prince And meets the official. No blame.
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 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
失恃无友，嘉福出走，傫如喪狗。
Losing support, without friends; blessings and fortune have fled; dejected like a homeless dog.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder rumbles above the mountain, but one has lost all support and has no allies — good fortune has fled, and one wanders abject as a homeless dog. The phrase 傫如喪狗 ('dejected like a dog at a funeral') is famously applied to Confucius himself: when he wandered between the states, someone described him as looking like a bereaved dog between funerals — exhausted, unwanted, belonging nowhere. The verse strips away every prop: no patron, no friend, no luck. From Small Exceeding to the Marrying Maiden, the mountain's thunder descends into thunder above the lake — an unequal union, a subordinate position. The Marrying Maiden enters a household where she has no standing; the masterless wanderer enters a world that has no place for him.
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