Revolution — 革

What Is Hexagram 49?

Hexagram 49, Gé (革), Revolution, is Lake above Fire — ䷰, 離下兌上: two daughters sharing one house whose aims do not agree, four firm strokes against two yielding ones, five of the six places filled by the kind of line that belongs in them, and the one judgment in the book that carries 悔亡, regret gone, as part of the figure's own terms.

The name is a hide before it is an event. The subcommentary opens by naming the subject — 「革」者，改變之名也。此卦明改制革命，故名「革」也, 革 is the word for alteration, and this figure sets out the reworking of institutions and the changing of a mandate, which is why it is named for it — and then, arriving at the first line, explains why the word for a worked animal skin is doing this job at all: 而名皮為革者，以禽獸之皮，皆可「從革」，故以喻焉, a hide is called 革 because every animal's skin can be taken through change. The objection follows immediately in the same passage, because the subcommentary is not sentimental about the metaphor: 皮雖從革之物，然牛皮堅仞難變, hides are things that change, and an ox's hide is hard and will not. So the figure's name holds both halves at once. It is the thing changed and the act of changing it, the raw material and the work, and it is also the resistance that the work runs into.

The Sequence supplies the occasion: 井道不可不革，故受之以革 — the way a well works cannot be left unreworked forever, and the book moves straight from keeping a source to reworking it. Hexagram 48 keeps a source in use across generations; Hexagram 49 is what happens when keeping it is no longer enough. Then the sequence continues with the pair that has been read together for two thousand years, 革物者莫若鼎，故受之以鼎, and the 雜卦 puts the same contrast into four characters each: 革去故也，鼎取新也, 革 takes away what is old, 鼎 takes up what is new. Nothing about the figure is about novelty for its own sake. It is about a form that has stopped being able to carry what it was made for.

Four details make this one of the stranger pages in the collection, and they are worth naming before the text is read clause by clause. 悔亡 stands in the judgment of exactly one figure of the sixty-four, and this is it: in the other fourteen figures where those two characters occur they sit in a line text, and here they sit in the statement of the whole figure. The character 占, the word for consulting the oracle, occurs once across all sixty-four judgments and their line texts, and it occurs in this figure's fifth line, in a sentence whose point is that no consultation is needed. Of the sixty-four Images, only one mentions the ledger of days, and it is this figure's. And of the sixty-four 彖, only two name people out of history — 明夷 names 文王 and 箕子, and this one names 湯 and 武 — which means the book chose one place to say the word revolution out loud, and this is that place.

Trigram Structure

䷰ is Fire below and Lake above. 離, the second daughter, sits under 兌, the third, and the two of them are water and fire at once, which the 彖 states as a flat physical fact: 革，水火相息，二女同居，其志不相得，曰革. 王弼's note takes the second character of 水火相息 and reads it twice over: 「息」者，生變之謂也，火欲上而澤欲下，水火相戰，而後生變者也, 息 here means to generate change — fire wants to go up and the marsh wants to come down, and the two of them fight, and out of the fight the change is born. The subcommentary then supplies the sensible version of the same sentence, and it is homelier than one expects from a seventh-century commentary: 火本乾燥，澤本潤濕。燥濕殊性。不可共處。若其共處，必相侵克。既相侵克，其變乃生，變生則本性改矣。水熱而成湯，火滅而氣冷，是謂「革」也 — fire is dry and a marsh is wet, dry and wet cannot share a place, and if they share one they will consume each other, and once they consume each other the change is born, and once the change is born their own natures are altered: water heats into soup, fire goes out into cold air, and that is what 革 means. The figure's name is not a moral program. It is a description of two incompatible natures in one container.

The second daughter and the third daughter are the figure's other half. 說卦 gives the two trigrams their one-word natures, 離，麗也 for the one below and 兌，說也 for the one above — Fire attaches and Lake delights, in two separate entries of the same chapter list — and it gives the daughters their place in the family, 離再索而得女，故謂之中女, where the second drawing brings a daughter and her name is the middle one, with 兌三索而得女，故謂之少女 at the end of the same list for the youngest. The subcommentary uses that domestic fact as the sharper reading of the 彖's first clause: 中、少二女而成一卦，此雖形同而志革也。一男一女，乃相感應，二女雖復同居，其志終不相得。志不相得，則變必生矣，所以為「革」 — a middle daughter and a youngest daughter make this figure, and though they are made of the same stuff their aims are altered from each other; a man and a woman would answer each other, and two women under one roof do not, and where aims do not answer the change is already on the way. What the figure is made of, then, is not evil or disorder but agreement that has run out.

The geometry makes the same argument with strokes. Of the six lines, four are firm and two are yielding, and the yielding ones stand at the second and the top: 101110 read from the bottom. Five of the six occupy the place suited to their kind, and the single stroke out of place is the fourth, a firm line in a yielding seat. The same line is the only one with no partner: the first and the fourth are both firm and therefore answer nothing in each other, while the second and the fifth answer each other and so do the third and the sixth, giving the figure two answering pairs and one dead pair. 王弼 names that dead pair when he gets to the fourth line, and names the regret that comes with it in four characters: 無應，悔也, it has nothing answering it, and that is the regret. A reader who wants the figure in one image can have it: five strokes in their right places, one out of place, and the one that is out of place is the one with nobody to answer it, and that is the stroke on which the mandate gets changed.

Two more frames belong here before the text. The first is the pair of transformations: turn these six strokes upside down and 101110 becomes 011101, which is Hexagram 50, the Cauldron — the figure the Sequence itself walks into, 革物者莫若鼎. Exchange every stroke for its contrary and 101110 becomes 010001, Hexagram 4, Youthful Folly, whose judgment is about a teacher who is asked and not told twice. So the figure of revolution stands between a cooking vessel and a beginner's lesson, and both of those are figures in which raw material is worked on until its nature changes. The second frame is the 說卦's inventory of the two trigrams, which is where the figure's imagery stops being abstract. 離 is 為火、為日、為電、為中女、為甲冑、為戈兵 — fire, sun, lightning, the middle daughter, armor, and weapons — and 兌 is 為澤、為少女、為巫、為口舌、為毀折、為附決, marsh, youngest daughter, shaman, mouth and tongue, breaking apart, and the attached parting. Between them the two trigrams hand this figure armor and weapons, speech, breaking, and a parting that comes attached to something else. The 彖 will need every one of those.

The Judgment

革：已日乃孚，元亨。利貞。悔亡。

Gé: yǐ rì nǎi fú, yuán hēng. Lì zhēn. Huǐ wáng.

Our rendering: Revolution: the day once it is out, there is trust. The great passage. Holding to what is right is what serves. Regret is gone.

The first clause is the whole figure's difficulty, and it is a statement about timing rather than about legitimacy. 已日乃孚 — 孚 is what a person feels when they can rely on something, and the clause says it arrives on the day after the day. 王弼's note opens with the sentence that the subcommentary will quote twice more before the page is done: 夫民可與習常，難與適變；可與樂成，難與慮始。故革之為道，即日不孚，「巳日乃孚」也 — people can be brought along in a settled routine and cannot easily be brought along through a change; they can be brought to enjoy a thing that is finished and cannot easily be brought to think through a thing at its beginning, and so in the way of revolution there is no trust on the day itself, only once the day is out. Then he draws the consequence that makes this judgment unusual: 孚，然後乃得「元亨利貞，悔亡」也。巳日而不孚，革不當也 — trust comes first, and only after it do the four characters of the great passage belong to the figure; and if the trust never arrives, then the change was not the right one. The order matters more than the verdict. The book does not say that a revolution is good and that trust follows from it. It says that trust is the test, and the test is taken late.

The orthography of that clause is a small editorial mess that has been in circulation for centuries, and it is worth naming because a reader will meet three different characters for it. The 周易 copy prints 已日, this volume's lemma prints 己日, and 王弼's own note and the subcommentary print 巳日 — 巳日乃孚 in the note, and 革初未孚，巳日乃信也 in the subcommentary, change is not trusted at the start and is trusted once the day is out, where 巳 is doing the work of 已. The reading the commentary settles on is not a date in the ten-day cycle but the sense of completion: on the day itself, no; by the time the day is over, yes. This page prints the 周易 copy's form and records the pair, and nothing in the reading turns on the choice.

Then three verdicts in a row, and the subcommentary shows what they are conditioned by: 革若不當，則悔吝交及，如能大通利貞，則革道當矣。為革而當，乃得亡其悔吝 — if the change is not the right one, regret and sting arrive together; if it can pass through and hold to what is correct, then the way of revolution was the right one, and being right is what removes the regret. 王弼 states the same thing as a law of the psyche in fewer words: 悔吝之所生，生乎變動者也。革而當，其悔乃亡也 — regret is born out of change; make the change fit, and the regret dies. So 悔亡, the two characters that no other judgment in the book carries, is not a promise handed to whoever wants a different arrangement. It is the last term of a conditional, and the condition is stated first.

The counts behind that clause are worth setting out, because the book is not lavish with this phrase. 元亨 opens the judgment of ten figures, and of those ten only six run straight on to 利貞 — 乾, 屯, 无妄, 臨, 隨, and this one. 悔亡 is written twenty times across the judgments and line texts of the collection, in fifteen different figures, and in exactly one of those fifteen it stands inside the judgment rather than inside a line: here. The subcommentary notes that the figure has earned it rather than been given it, 革而當理，其悔乃亡消也, make the change fit the pattern and the regret is dissolved.

The 彖 turns the outline into a story with a shape. 革，水火相息，二女同居，其志不相得，曰革 — the two natures consume each other, the two daughters do not agree, and that is the name. 已日乃孚，革而信也 — the trust comes late, and the trust is what makes the change credible. 文明以說，大亨以正，革而當，其悔乃亡 — 王弼 reads those first four characters as the mechanics of credibility: 夫所以得革而信者，「文明以說」也。「文明以說」，履正而行，以斯為革，應天順民，大亨以正者也, what earns the change its trust is that the attaching nature below is bright and the delighting nature above makes it acceptable; walk in what is correct, change on that basis, and the change answers heaven and follows the people. The subcommentary spells out the two trigrams' work in the same order, 能思文明之德以說於人，所以革命而為民所信也 — to think the bright pattern through and to make it acceptable to other people is what gets a revolution believed. That is a dry sentence and a demanding one, and it is the figure's own account of why 已日 comes second rather than first.

Then the last clause of the 彖, which is the loudest sentence in the figure: 天地革而四時成，湯武革命，順乎天而應乎人，革之時義大矣哉. Heaven and earth change, and the four seasons come about. 湯 and 武 changed the mandate, and they did it in accord with heaven and in answer to people. The subcommentary gives the sentence its scope: 天地之道，陰陽升降，溫暑涼寒，迭相變革，然後四時之序皆有成也 — the way of heaven and earth is that yin and yang rise and fall and heat and cold take each other's places, and only then does the order of the four seasons come about. Then it explains why the 彖 names these two kings and no others, and the explanation is a piece of political realism rather than piety: 計王者相承，改正易服，皆有變革，而獨舉湯、武者，蓋舜、禹禪讓，猶或因循，湯、武干戈，極其損益，故取相變甚者，以明人革也 — every dynasty changes its first month and its court dress, and the 彖 singles out 湯 and 武 because 舜 and 禹 handed over by abdication and let things run on as they were, while 湯 and 武 took up weapons and went to the farthest end of what could be altered, and so the text chose the harshest instance of change to make plain what human revolution is. The subcommentary also refuses to prettify what those two did, and names the acts: 放桀鳴條，誅紂牧野，革其王命，改其惡俗, Jie was driven out at Mingtiao and Zhou was executed at Muye, and their royal mandate was changed and their bad customs reformed. This is the figure's most uncomfortable paragraph, and the book does not soften it. What it does instead is put the natural fact first — the seasons change, and that is why change is legitimate — and the historical violence second, as the human scale of the same thing.

One textual variant should be recorded. This volume's 彖 ends 革之時大矣哉, without 義, and the subcommentary's note on the ending accounts for the shorter form: 備論革道之廣訖，總結歎其大，故曰「大矣哉」也 — having set out the breadth of the way of revolution to its end, the text sums it up and sighs at its size. The 周易 copy prints 革之時義大矣哉, with the 義, in the form that appears in six 彖 of the sixty-four — 豫, 遯, 解, 姤, 旅, and this one — while two 彖 carry 時大矣哉, 大過 and 頤, and three carry 時用大矣哉, 坎, 睽, and 蹇. The figure is not the only one whose ending is disputed between copies, and the difference is the same one that turns up wherever a 彖 ends on the word of the whole matter.

Jungian reading. The judgment's first clause is the part of this figure that depth psychology can use without translating anything, because it describes a timing that cannot be forced. Trust in a change arrives after the change, not before it, and 王弼 draws the psychological consequence in the same passage he draws the political one: people can follow a settled routine and cannot easily be walked through a transition, can enjoy a finished thing and cannot easily think a beginning through. Jung's writing about change in the second half of life keeps landing on exactly this asymmetry. An attitude that was adapted to one set of conditions does not yield to argument or to insight on demand; it yields when it has been lived out, and what replaces it arrives late and often unrecognized, which is why he used the word enantiodromia for the way a one-sided position turns into its opposite without anybody deciding that it should. 已日乃孚 states the same thing as a rule of the oracle: on the day, no; once the day is out, yes. The figure's second contribution is the condition attached to the hope. 悔亡 is offered only to the change that fits, 革而當, and 王弼's sentence about regret being born of change is the reason the condition is not arbitrary. Where a psyche keeps its losses attached to its changes, the change itself is usually the reason: a thing was altered that had not stopped working, or a thing was altered too fast for the people inside it, or a thing was altered in name while its function stayed where it was. The book's counter-offer is not a more enthusiastic change but a better-fitting one.

The Image

象曰：澤中有火，革；君子以治歷明時。

Zé zhōng yǒu huǒ, gé; jūn zǐ yǐ zhì lì míng shí.

Our rendering: Fire inside the marsh: Revolution. The noble one therefore sets the count of days straight and reads the seasons by it.

The Image puts fire and water in one place and draws the plain conclusion: 火在澤中，二性相違，必相改變，故為革象也 — fire is in the marsh, the two natures run against each other, and they must alter one another, which is what makes this the emblem of revolution. What the noble one is told to do with that emblem is unexpected. He is not told to overthrow anything, to attack, to reform a court or change the dress of a state. He is told to get the calendar right. 王弼's note reduces the instruction to five characters: 歷數時會，存乎變也 — the count of days and the meeting of seasons rest on change. The subcommentary explains why the calendar is the right response to that: 天時變改，故須歷數，所以君子觀茲革象，脩治歷數，以明天時也 — the seasons of heaven alter, and therefore the counting of days is required; the noble one looks at this emblem and puts the reckoning in order so that the seasons of heaven become legible. Change is not something a person can prevent or make war on. It is something a person can number.

This is the only Image of the sixty-four in which the character 歷, the ledger of days, appears, and the isolation is worth pausing over. Two other Images come close to the same territory and stop short of it. 復 records that the ancient kings shut the passes on the solstice day and that the sovereign did not tour the districts, 先王以至日閉關 and 后不省方, and 无妄 records that the ancient kings answered the season and raised the ten thousand things, 先王以茂對時，育萬物 — so the calendar as an event and the season as a duty are both in the book, and both of them are given to kings. Neither of them asks for the reckoning itself. This figure does, and it does it in an Image addressed to 君子 rather than to 先王, which is the other half of the point. Of the sixty-four Images, fifty-three address 君子, seven address 先王, two address 后, and one each address 大人 and a 上, and the one Image that asks for the count of days is addressed to the private person. Getting the calendar right is this figure's idea of how a person should stand inside a change — not by opposing it, not by announcing it, but by knowing what day it is.

There is a second thing in the phrasing that only shows up when the Image is read next to the 彖 beside it. The 彖 says that heaven and earth change, and the seasons come about, 天地革而四時成. The Image says that the noble one corrects the count of days and makes the seasons known. Between the two sentences there is an order of operations: the seasons come from change whether or not anyone is counting, and the human half of the work is the counting. The 說卦's inventory of the trigram below makes the same point from the other direction, since 離 is 為日、為電, sun and lightning, the two things in the figure that are brightest and shortest, and 兌 is 為口舌, the mouth and tongue, which is how anything gets said out loud. Brightness above and speech on top, and the instruction is to number the days. It is a quiet answer to a loud emblem.

Jungian reading. What the Image does for this figure is provide the container, and Jung's writing about transformation is unusually consistent about why one is needed. He held that the psyche does not change in the abstract, and that a person in the middle of a large change reaches for something repeatable to carry it — a practice, a date, a form of words — because a change held only in the head does not hold. The calendar is as impersonal a container as the tradition kept: nobody owns Tuesday, nobody argues about whether the solstice happened, and a count of days gives a person something to do that is neither resistance nor surrender. Read next to the 彖, the pairing also draws a line under the figure's politics. Heaven changes with or without permission, 天地革而四時成, and the human institution built on that fact is not a revolution but a reckoning. A person who can tell what season they are in does not have to be told when to change.

The Lines

初九：鞏用黃牛之革。 (Gǒng yòng huáng niú zhī gé.) Bound down with a yellow ox's hide.

The figure opens with a restraint rather than a beginning, and 王弼 opens his note the same way: 在革之始，革道未成，固夫常中，未能應變者也。此可以守成，不可以有為也 — at the start of a revolution the way of revolution is not yet made; a person who fastens himself to the settled middle has not yet answered the change, and in that position he can hold what exists but cannot take initiative. Then the three characters of the line are glossed one at a time: 鞏，固也。黃，中也。牛之革，堅仞不可變也 — 鞏 is to fasten, 黃 is the center, and the hide of an ox is hard and will not be altered. The subcommentary adds the etymology that ties the line to the figure's name, 皮雖從革之物，然牛皮堅仞難變, and draws the picture: 有似用牛皮以自固，未肯造次以從變者也 — the person in this position looks like someone lashing himself down with oxhide, unwilling to rush into the change. The Small Says is blunt about the outcome, 不可以有為也, and the subcommentary defines the word being refused: 「有為」謂適時之變，有所云為也 — 有為 here means the alteration that fits the moment, the act of doing something about it; what is praised elsewhere is simply not available yet.

Two counts belong with this line. 革, the word for change, appears in the judgment and line texts of only three figures in the whole collection — this one, where it occurs as the figure's name and then in three line texts as an act, and 遯, and 鼎 — and two of those occurrences name a hide rather than a change: this figure's opening line and the second line of Retreat. 黃牛 occurs in the same texts of exactly two figures, here and at the second line of Hexagram 33, where the text binds a thing with it so that it cannot get away. The two lines form a pair worth holding together: in Retreat, oxhide is what a person uses to keep hold of something he is leaving; here, oxhide is what a person uses to keep hold of himself before a change he has not yet joined. Both are descriptions of holding, and neither is a description of cowardice — the book's verdict elsewhere on fixed positions is harsher than anything it says here.

Jungian reading. What this line says, in Jung's terms, is that resistance has a season. A person standing at the beginning of a large change who is still fastened to the old arrangement is not being dishonest or lazy; he is being asked to hold a form that still works while the form that replaces it has not been given yet, and the figure's advice is to know which of the two situations he is in. Jung's accounts of the second half of life make a point of distinguishing the paralysis that comes from fear from the stillness that comes from not yet being called, and the two look identical from outside. The line's warning is against the version of stillness that mistakes itself for a principle. 黃, the center, is the one word in the line that can be turned into a program: hold the middle, not the habit.

六二：已日乃革之，征吉，无咎。 (Yǐ rì nǎi gé zhī, zhēng jí, wú jiù.) When the day is out, then change it: setting out brings good fortune, and no blame.

This is the one line of the six that repeats the judgment's first two characters, and it is the one line whose verdict is unqualifiedly good: 征吉，无咎. 王弼 reads it as a statement about what a yielding line can and cannot do — 陰之為物，不能先唱，順從者也。不能自革，革巳乃能從之 — a yielding thing cannot take the lead but follows, and cannot make the change itself; it follows the change once the change has been made. What follows in his note is the reason the line is treated generously rather than as an admission of weakness: 二與五雖有水火殊體之異，同處厥中，陰陽相應，往必合志不憂咎也，是以征吉而無咎 — the second and the fifth belong to different elements, water and fire, and both sit in the middle of their trigrams; being of different kinds and yet answering each other, they will meet on the whole of what they intend, and there is no need to worry about blame. The subcommentary adds the one caveat the note leaves unstated: 二五雖是相應，而水火殊體，嫌有相克之過。故曰「無咎」 — because the two of them are fire and water, there is a suspicion of the one harming the other, which is why the line closes with 无咎 rather than stopping at 征吉. The Small Says gives the reward in three characters, 行有嘉也, and the subcommentary reads it as acceptance: 往應見納，故行有嘉慶也 — going forward, the answer is taken, and so the going is rewarded.

The line's place in the figure is worth marking, because it is the counterweight to everything energetic in it. Nothing here proposes; the line waits for the day, and then joins a change that somebody else has already carried. Its verdict is the best in the figure, and the book is consistent about that throughout the collection — the figures that reward waiting, 需, 漸, and this one at its second line, treat timing as a skill rather than as a delay. The count that belongs here is one of the figure's three uses of 征: this is the only one of the three that is good.

Jungian reading. 王弼's phrase for this line's failure mode is one that has no exact modern equivalent and does not need one: a follower cannot lead the change, and cannot make it, and follows it once it is out. Jung's writing about participation in collective movements treats the same position with more suspicion than the book does, because he saw how easily a person can substitute joining for changing. The line's defense is that it does not pretend otherwise: the trust arrives by the day being out, the move comes after the move, and the thing being asked of the person is agreement with something they did not originate. The distinction that saves the line from being merely passive is the difference between following a change that has actually happened and following an announcement that one has. 已日乃革之 attaches the action to the event, not to the declaration of the event, and it is the event that the line waits for.

九三：征凶，貞厲，革言三就，有孚。 (Zhēng xiōng, zhēn lì, gé yán sān jiù, yǒu fú.) Setting out brings misfortune; holding on brings peril. The talk of change has been taken up three times over, and there is trust.

The third line is the figure's most interesting failure, because nothing about it is wrong except the amount. 王弼 locates it at the top of the lower trigram, which is as far as fire can go: 巳處火極，上卦三爻，雖體水性，皆「從革」者也。自四至上，從命而變，不敢自違，故曰「革言三就」。其言實誠，故曰「有孚」 — the line has reached the extreme of fire, and the three strokes of the upper trigram, whose nature is water, are all of them following the change; from the fourth to the top they change as they are told and do not dare to go against it, which is why the text says the talk of change has been settled three times, and because their words are sincere it says there is trust. Then the indictment: 「革言三就有孚」而猶征之，凶其宜也 — the words have been settled three times and the trust is there, and if a person still goes out to force it, misfortune is what he deserves. The subcommentary works through the sequence so that the arithmetic is visible: 九三陽爻剛壯，又居火極，火性炎上，處革之時，欲征之使革。征之非道，則正之危也 — a firm and strong line at the top of fire wants to march and make the change happen, and a march that is not the way to it puts the correct thing in danger, which is why the text gives 征凶 and then 貞厲. The three strokes being counted are the three above the third, and the subcommentary says their agreement is what makes the trust real: 則「從革」之言三爻並成就不虛. The Small Says asks what remains to be asked, 又何之矣, and the subcommentary answers it as a question about target: 征之本為不從，既「革言三就」，更又何往征伐矣 — marching is for things that have not agreed, and if the words have been settled three times, where is there left to march on.

Two counts sharpen the line. 就 occurs once in the whole collection of judgments and line texts, here, which means the book has exactly one phrase for consent counted three times over. And 征 occurs three times in this figure's line texts — at the second line as good fortune, at this line and at the top as misfortune — more than in any other figure; the book's total across all sixty-four is nineteen uses in fifteen figures, and this figure spends three of them to make one point about appetite. 貞厲 is one of the collection's eight uses of that pair, and it is a verdict of tension rather than of outcome: holding on is what a person must do here, and it is perilous anyway.

Jungian reading. Jung's description of the reformer's inflation fits this line closely enough to be uncomfortable: a person who has identified with the change he is carrying stops being able to tell the difference between the work that still has to be done and the work he wants to be seen doing, and his energy turns from the thing to the enforcing of the thing. The line's structure is precise about the failure, and it is not a failure of principle. The words have been accepted three times; the trust is real; the one move the text then refuses is to keep pushing, and the figure calls that move 凶 while calling the position itself 厲. Two verdicts of danger in one line, and neither of them is about the person's character. It is a diagnosis of surplus.

九四：悔亡，有孚改命，吉。 (Huǐ wáng, yǒu fú gǎi mìng, jí.) Regret is gone. There is trust, and the charge is changed: good fortune.

The fourth line is the figure's hinge, and the commentary on it turns on position rather than virtue. 王弼 begins with a comparison between the fourth line and the first, which share a place at the bottom of their trigrams: 初九處下卦之下，九四處上卦之下，故能變也 — the first sits at the bottom of the lower trigram and the fourth at the bottom of the upper, which is why this one can change. Then the two characters that name its problem: 無應，悔也 — it has nothing answering it, and that is the regret. The reason the regret goes is a matter of its neighbors: 與水火相比，能變者也，是以「悔亡」。處水火之際，居會變之始，能不固吝，不疑於下，信志改命，不失時願，是以「吉」也 — it stands where fire and water meet, at the beginning of the place where change gathers, and being able to give up its fixedness and not to distrust what is below it, it trusts the aim and changes the charge, and good fortune follows. His closing clause gives the line's office in five characters, 處上體之下，始宣命也 — at the bottom of the upper trigram, this is where the command begins to be announced. The subcommentary fills in the mechanics and keeps the parallel running: 九四與初，同處卦下。初九處下卦之下，革道未成，故未能變 — the first and the fourth both stand at the bottom of a trigram, and the first cannot change because the way of revolution is not yet made, while the fourth can. The Small Says gives the reason in three characters, 信志也, and both notes read it as trust moving upward and downward at once: 王弼's 信志而行, walking by the trust, and the subcommentary's 信下之志而行其命也, trusting the aim of what is below and carrying out the command.

The line carries three facts that together make it the figure's hinge. 改命, the changing of the charge, appears exactly once among the sixty-four judgments and their lines, and it appears here. This is the one stroke of the figure out of its proper place, a firm line in a yielding seat, and the one with no partner above or below, since the first line is firm too — so the single unpaired and misplaced line is the line on which the mandate is changed, and the book's own geometry is doing part of the argument. And the character 命, the word for what has been assigned to a person, appears in this figure only here, which is why the figure is about change and about authority in the same breath.

Jungian reading. The fourth line is where a person stops asking permission, and the commentary is careful to say what kind of act that is. 改命 is not the invention of a new command; it is the changing of a charge that was received, and it is done by someone who has been trusting what is below him rather than overriding it. Jung's writing on the relation between the ego and what he called the objective psyche has an oddly parallel structure: the decisive acts of a life are usually not choices made in the open but rearrangements of an authority a person did not issue, and the tell that such an act is genuine rather than willful is that it does not cut anyone below it loose. 王弼's four characters for the difference are 不固吝，不疑於下 — not to hang on tight and not to distrust what is underneath. The regret that goes here is the regret of having no one to answer to. The line says that this particular solitude, once it is squarely occupied, is where the change gets made.

九五：大人虎變，未占有孚。 (Dà rén hǔ biàn, wèi zhān yǒu fú.) The great one alters as a tiger does: the trust is there before the oracle is asked.

The fifth line is the figure's summit, and its commentary is about visibility. 王弼 gives the line four characters and lets them stand: 「未占而孚」，合時心也 — there is trust before any consultation, because it fits what the moment wants. The subcommentary expands it into a description of a governed image: 九五居中處尊，以大人之德為革之主，損益前王，創制立法，有文章之美，煥然可觀，有似「虎變」，其文彪炳 — the line sits central and high, and with the virtue of a great person it takes charge of the change: it takes from the earlier kings and adds to them, sets up institutions and institutes law, and the pattern of it is beautiful and bright to look at, like a tiger changing, whose stripes are vivid. Then it draws the consequence for the person: 則是湯、武革命，廣大應人，不勞占決，信德自著 — this is 湯 and 武 changing the mandate, answering people on a wide scale, without the labor of consulting and deciding, because a trust that is a quality shows on its own. The Small Says names what shows: 其文炳也, the pattern is bright, and the subcommentary reads the brightness as the pattern itself, 義取文章炳著也.

Three counts belong to this line, and together they make the case for reading it as the book's one statement about certainty. The character 占, the word for consulting the oracle, has one occurrence in the judgments and line texts of the whole collection, and it falls here, in a sentence about not needing to consult. 虎 appears in the same texts of only three figures — three times in Hexagram 10, once in Hexagram 27, once here — and in both of the others the tiger is a creature a person meets and has to get past; this is the only place where the tiger is a form a person takes. 大人 occurs twelve times across nine figures, and in the other eleven places the phrase either tells a reader that it serves to see such a person or attaches a verdict to one; only here is the great person himself the one who changes. The image itself is a piece of natural observation that the tradition found useful for the same reason the figure's name is a hide: a tiger does not decide to change its coat. It sheds, and the pattern underneath is already there.

Jungian reading. The fifth line describes the moment when a transformation has become visible without having been announced, and Jung's vocabulary for that has always been the vocabulary of images rather than of decisions — what is shown, what is patterned, what a person is rather than what a person has concluded. The line's own word for it is 文, the pattern, which the book also uses for the marks on a hide and for culture itself, so that the tiger's stripes and a civilized order are the same word. The reason no consultation is needed is not that the person has become infallible; it is that there is nothing left open to consult about. Jung's late remark that a symbol is the best possible expression of something that cannot be stated any other way sits close to this line's logic: what has happened here is not a conclusion a person could have reached by asking, and it does not need to be verified by asking either. The trust arrives with the pattern, and the pattern is on the outside of the person before it is on the inside.

上六：君子豹變，小人革面，征凶，居貞吉。 (Jūn zǐ bào biàn, xiǎo rén gé miàn, zhēng xiōng, jū zhēn jí.) The noble one alters as the leopard does; the small one alters his face. Setting out brings misfortune; staying and holding: good fortune.

The top line is where the figure closes its accounts, and it does so by sorting two kinds of change in six characters. 王弼 begins from the position: 居變之終，變道巳成，君子處之，能成其文 — the line sits at the end of the change, the way of changing is already made, and a noble person in this position can bring the pattern to completion. Then the other half: 小人樂成，則變面以順上也 — a small person enjoys what is finished, and alters his face to fall in with whoever is above him. The subcommentary is more generous than one might expect about the first of those, 上六居革之終，變道巳成，君子處之，雖不能同九五革命創制，如虎文之彪炳，然亦潤色鴻業，如豹文之蔚縟 — a noble person at this line cannot do what the fifth line did and set up institutions, but he can touch up a great undertaking the way a leopard's dense markings lie over it, which is where the leopard comes from. On the second it has no patience at all: 小人革面」者，小人處之，但能變其顏面，容色順上而巳 — a small person alters his face, and his expression falls in with what is above, and that is the whole of it. Then the line's two verdicts, which 王弼 files under the state of the work rather than under the character of the person: 改命創制，變道巳成，功成則事損，事損則無為。故居則得正而吉，征則躁擾而凶也 — the charge has been changed and the institutions set up, the way of change is completed, and when the work is done the business falls off and there is nothing left to do; to stay is correct and good, and to march is agitated and bad. The subcommentary draws the two halves of the Small Says apart in exactly those terms: 其文蔚」者，明其不能大變，故文炳而相映蔚也 for the leopard, and 順以從君」者，明其不能潤色立制，但順而從君也 for the small person, who cannot touch up what was made and can only fall in behind.

The counts here are the strongest in the figure. 豹 occurs once in the judgments and line texts of the whole collection, at this line. 面 occurs once in the same texts of the entire book, at this line, which means the collection has exactly one sentence about a person changing his face. 征凶 closes the figure's third use of 征 against one use of 征吉 at the second line. And 居貞 occurs in only four figures of the sixty-four — 屯, 隨, 革, and 頤 — so the book has few places where staying put is named as the correct thing to do, and one of them is here, at the end of the figure about change. 小人 appears in the judgments and line texts of ten figures of the collection, and seven of those figures name 君子 as well.

Jungian reading. This line contains the figure's real warning, and it is not about revolution; it is about what happens to a person's surface when the environment changes and the person does not. 革面 is an alteration of the face: the person adjusts what can be seen, and the words the subcommentary uses for it — 變其顏面，容色順上, the expression falls in with what is above — describe what Jung called the persona doing its ordinary work of adaptation. The line does not say the adaptation is a lie. It says it is the whole of the change, which is the difference between a mask put on and a pattern grown. The leopard and the small man stand in the same clause and both of them change, and what separates them is whether anything under the skin moved, which is not a thing other people can see and is barely a thing the person can see. The line's last two characters are the figure's closing instruction and they point the same way: after the change is made, further pushing is not devotion but agitation. 居貞吉 — stay, and hold.

Daily Life

The figure's first practical lesson is a warning against announcing. 已日乃孚 says that the trust that makes a change real arrives after the change, not before it, and the subcommentary's reason is one every household and every team has met: people can enjoy a thing finished and cannot easily think a beginning through. So the useful version of this figure in ordinary life is not a plan for persuading anyone. It is a plan for a change that will be trusted late, which means the change has to be worth trusting when the bill arrives and the novelty has worn off. A person who notices that every change they make has to be sold twice — once before and once again after — is standing exactly where 王弼 says a reformer stands, and the figure's advice at that point is to check the fit of the thing rather than the power of the pitch. 革而當，其悔乃亡. Make it fit, and the regret looks after itself.

The second lesson is about the first month. The figure's opening line binds a person with oxhide, and the commentary's reading of that is not cowardice but a distinction between the middle and the habit: 固夫常中，未能應變, fastened to the settled center, not yet answering the change. In practice it means that the earliest phase of a change asks for holding, not acting, and that there is nothing wrong with being the person who keeps the accounts straight while other people decide to rearrange the furniture. What the line does forbid is calling that holding a principle. 不可以有為也 is a statement about a moment, not about a person, and the figure gives the green light two lines later to someone who does nothing but wait and then join.

The third lesson is the one most useful at work and in families, and it comes from the line about counting three times. 革言三就，有孚 — the words have been taken up three times over, and there is trust — is followed immediately by 征凶. In practice the failure this describes is a person who keeps arguing after the room has already agreed: three versions of the proposal, three conversations, three revisions, and then a fourth push that undoes the goodwill the first three produced. The line calls that pushing 凶 while calling the position itself 厲, which is an accurate description of how it feels. For anyone who has ever been the one carrying a change, the line's test is a good one to run before speaking: has this been settled three times already, and am I about to say it a fourth time because I want to be seen saying it?

The fourth lesson is the Image's, and it is the one a reader can use tomorrow with none of the commentary at hand. 君子以治歷明時 asks for a calendar rather than a campaign. A person changing a habit, a department, or a house can do one thing that the figure rates far above enthusiasm: put the change on the calendar, count the days, and learn to tell what season the effort is in. The reckoning is what makes the change survivable, because it converts a decision that has to keep being renewed into an ordinary fact about the date. And the fifth lesson is the top line's, which is the one most worth remembering a year later: 小人革面 is what a surface adjustment looks like from the outside, and it is indistinguishable from real change until something is asked of it. The figure's own way of telling them apart is not to inspect the person but to wait: the leopard's pattern is the one that does not have to be redone.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 49 mean in one sentence?

That a change is trusted late rather than early, and only if it fits: 已日乃孚, trust comes once the day is out, not on it, 革而當，其悔乃亡, make the change fit and the regret dissolves, and this figure is the only one of the sixty-four whose judgment carries 悔亡 at all — in the other fourteen figures where those two characters appear they sit in a line, and here they sit in the statement of the whole figure.

Why does the 彖 name 湯 and 武, when the rest of the book almost never names people out of history?

Because the 彖 needed an instance of change at the scale of a dynasty, and the subcommentary says why those two and not others: every dynasty alters its first month and its court dress, and the text singled out 湯 and 武 because 舜 and 禹 handed over by abdication and let things run on as they were, while 湯 and 武 took up weapons and went to the farthest end of what could be altered, 故取相變甚者，以明人革也. Only two 彖 of the sixty-four name people from history at all — 明夷 names 文王 and 箕子, and this one names these two. The passage does not celebrate what they did; it names the executions, 誅紂牧野, and puts the natural fact first: heaven and earth change and the four seasons come about, and only then the human scale of the same thing.

Why does the word 占 appear only once in the whole book, and what does it say here?

Because that one appearance is a statement that no consultation is needed. 大人虎變，未占有孚 — the great one alters as a tiger does, and the trust is there before the oracle is asked — with 王弼's note cutting it to four characters, 「未占而孚」，合時心也, the trust before consulting fits what the moment wants, and the subcommentary adding that this is a change carried out without the labor of consulting and deciding, 不勞占決，信德自著. In a book whose whole use is consultation, the single occurrence of the word for consulting the oracle is placed on the line where the answer is already visible in the pattern.

What is the difference between 大人虎變 and 小人革面?

The first is a pattern that has changed and shows, and the second is a face that has changed and shows. 王弼 draws the line with a sentence about what each is capable of: 君子處之，能成其文 for the noble one at the top, who can bring the pattern to completion, and 小人樂成，則變面以順上也 for the small one, who enjoys what is finished and adjusts his expression to fall in with whoever is above him. The subcommentary adds that the noble one at this line cannot build institutions the way the fifth line does, 雖不能同九五革命創制, and can only touch up what exists, 如豹文之蔚縟; what separates the two of them is therefore not rank but depth, and the character 面, the face, turns up only once anywhere among the judgments and lines, in this clause.

The I Ching is a mirror for reflection, not a prediction machine.