小畜 → 未濟
Hexagram 9: Small Taming → Hexagram 64: Before Completion
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 4, 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 4
六四 有孚。血去惕出。无咎。
Six in the fourth place means: If you are sincere, blood vanishes and fear gives way. No blame.
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
三足孤烏,靈鳴督卸,思過罰惡,自賊其家。
The three-legged solitary crow, its spirit cry urges and drives. Reflecting on faults, punishing evil; it ruins its own house.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind above heaven dissolves into fire hovering above water — Before Completion's perpetual almost. The three-legged sun-crow, lone and solitary, cries out in its numinous voice, urging reflection on past faults and punishment of evil. Yet it brings ruin upon its own household. From Small Taming to Before Completion, the verse ends the cycle with Wei Ji's irresolvable tension. Fire above water — each element in the other's place — represents a world not yet aligned. The sun-crow, emblem of celestial order, here turns its judicial energy inward: prosecuting evil but destroying its own home in the process. Self-correction pursued without wisdom becomes self-destruction. Before Completion warns that the final crossing demands the most care, and premature judgment capsizes the vessel midstream.
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