既濟 → 損
Hexagram 63: After Completion → Hexagram 41: Decrease
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 5, 6).
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.
Line 5
九五 東鄰殺牛。不如西鄰之禴祭。實受其福。
Nine in the fifth place means: The neighbor in the east who slaughters an ox Does not attain as much real happiness As the neighbor in the west With his small offering.
Line 6
上六 濡其首。厲。
Six at the top means: He gets his head in the water. Danger.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
天門地戶，幽冥不覩，不知所在。
Heaven's gate and earth's door; dark and dim, unseen. Whereabouts unknown.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Water sits above fire, but the gates of heaven and earth are sealed. The underworld is impenetrably dark; one cannot perceive what lies within or know where anything is. The verse is three lines of absolute disorientation: heaven's gate locked, earth's portal shut, darkness total. From After Completion to Decrease, fire-and-water balance transforms into the mountain rising above the lake — the lake's substance diminished to feed the mountain's height. Decrease here is ontological: not merely losing possessions but losing all spatial and cognitive bearings. The completed order, which once held everything in place, has been reduced to a void where neither heaven nor earth offers passage. What remains is the discipline to accept radical loss without panic.
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