師 → 臨
Hexagram 7: The Army → Hexagram 19: Approach
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 1).
Line 1
初六 師出以律。否臧凶。
Six at the beginning means: An army must set forth in proper order. If the order is not good, misfortune threatens.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
玄黃虺隤，行者勞罷。役夫憔悴，踰時不歸。
Dark and ailing, stumbling on; the traveler is weary and spent. The conscript laborer is haggard; past his time, he does not return.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Water hidden within the earth drives the conscripts forward until they collapse. Horses stumble sick and exhausted — the phrase 'xuan-huang hui-tui' echoes the Shijing lament of overworked war-horses. Travelers are spent and weary; the laborers are haggard beyond recognition, long past the time they should have returned. The verse is a soldiers' complaint distilled to its essence: endless service with no relief and no homecoming. From The Army to Approach, the earth rises above the lake in a gesture of authority drawing near. Yet approach implies benevolent oversight — the commander's duty to limit demands on those who serve. Here that duty has been abandoned.
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