小畜 → 蒙
Hexagram 9: Small Taming → Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 5).
Line 1
初九 復自道。何其咎。吉。
Nine at the beginning means: Return to the way. How could there be blame in this? Good fortune.
Line 3
九三 輿說輻。夫妻反目。
Nine in the third place means: The spokes burst out of the wagon wheels. Man and wife roll their eyes.
Line 5
九五 有孚攣如。富以其鄰。
Nine in the fifth place means: If you are sincere and loyally attached, You are rich in your neighbor.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
機關不便，不能出言；精誠不通，為人所冤。
The mechanism is not smooth; he cannot speak his words. His sincerity cannot get through; he is wronged by others.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind above heaven gives way to a spring blocked beneath the mountain. The mechanism jams and cannot produce speech; sincerity fails to communicate, and the innocent are wrongly accused. From Small Taming to Youthful Folly, heaven's broad sky narrows into the dark passage where a mountain spring must find its way through rock. Meng's image — water emerging below the mountain — suggests potential that has not yet found its outlet. The verse captures the painful state before breakthrough: one knows the truth but cannot articulate it, and that silence becomes a weapon turned against the self. The spring is there, but the rock has not yet cracked.
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