未濟 → 旅
Hexagram 64: Before Completion → Hexagram 56: The Wanderer
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 3, 4).
Line 1
初六 濡其尾。吝。
Six at the beginning means: He gets his tail in the water. Humiliating.
Line 2
九二 曳其輪。貞吉。
Nine in the second place means: He brakes his wheels. Perseverance brings good fortune.
Line 3
六三 未濟征凶。利涉大川。
Six in the third place means: Before completion, attack brings misfortune. It furthers one to cross the great water.
Line 4
九四 貞吉悔亡。震用伐鬼方。三年有賞于大國。
Nine in the fourth place means: Perseverance brings good fortune. Remorse disappears. Shock, thus to discipline the Devil's Country. For three years, great realms are awarded.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
鬼夜哭泣，齊失其國，為下所賊。
Ghosts wail in the night; Qi has lost its state; betrayed by those beneath.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire above water, and ghosts weep in the night. The state of Qi has lost its patrimony, overthrown from below. The verse is terse and devastating: nocturnal weeping, state collapse, betrayal by subordinates. This almost certainly alludes to the Tian clan's usurpation of the Jiang rulers of Qi — a process that began with Tian Chengzi's assassination of Duke Jian in 481 BC and culminated in the formal replacement of the ruling house in 386 BC. The ghosts are the dispossessed ancestral spirits of the Jiang line. From Before Completion to the Wanderer, fire-over-water transforms into fire above the mountain — the traveler's fire, burning bright but homeless. The displaced ruling house becomes a permanent wanderer, its ancestral temples empty, its spirits crying into the void.
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