既濟 → 坎
Hexagram 63: After Completion → Hexagram 29: The Abysmal Water
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 3).
Line 1
初九 曳其輪。濡其尾。无咎。
Nine at the beginning means: He breaks his wheels. He gets his tail in the water. No blame.
Line 2
六二 婦喪其茀。勿逐。七日得。
Six in the second place means: The woman loses the curtain of her carriage. Do not run after it; On the seventh day you will get it.
Line 3
九三 高宗伐鬼方。三年克之。小人勿用。
Nine in the third place means: The Illustrious Ancestor Disciplines the Devil's Country. After three years he conquers it. Inferior people must not be employed.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
望幸不到，文章未成。王子逐兔，犬踦不得。
Hoped-for favor does not arrive; the written work remains unfinished. The prince chases the rabbit, but the lame dog cannot catch it.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Water sits above fire, but the hoped-for imperial favor never arrives, and the literary composition remains unfinished. A prince chases a rabbit, but his dog stumbles and cannot catch it. Every pursuit in this verse falls short: the anticipated visit does not come, the essay is not completed, and even the hunt fails when the hound trips. From After Completion to the Abysmal, fire-and-water order plunges into doubled water — peril upon peril, the abyss that keeps flowing. The completed state that should have produced results instead generates only near-misses. The Abysmal's lesson is to keep faith amid repeated failure, but the verse offers no resolution, only the deepening frustration of a world where nothing quite connects.
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