未濟 → 困
Hexagram 64: Before Completion → Hexagram 47: Oppression
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 5, 6).
Line 5
六五 貞吉无悔。君子之光。有孚吉。
Six in the fifth place means: Perseverance brings good fortune. No remorse. The light of the superior man is true. Good fortune.
Line 6
上九 有孚于飲酒。无咎。濡其首。有孚失是。
Nine at the top means: There is drinking of wine In genuine confidence. No blame. But if one wets his head, He loses it, in truth.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
蟠梅折枝，與母別離，絕不相知。
The broken lotus root — no silk threads connecting. The fallen leaf parts from the branch, never to return. A mother calls her child's name, but the wind does not carry it. The child gazes toward the old garden — ten thousand mountains between.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire above water, and the severance is total. The original verse speaks of a plum branch broken from its tree — separated from the mother, never to know each other again. The modern rewrite elaborates: cut lotus root with no connecting threads, fallen leaves that cannot return to the branch, a mother calling her child's name into the wind, the child gazing homeward across ten thousand mountains. From Before Completion to Oppression, fire-over-water transforms into the lake with no water — the most desolate image in the Yi. Oppression counsels 'devoting one's life to pursuing one's purpose,' but here the purpose is reunion, and reunion is impossible. The mountains between mother and child are the very structure of oppression: visible yet impassable.
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