大过 Great Excess
Upper trigram: Lake (the lake) · Lower trigram: Wind (wind)
Too much weight — the ridgepole sags and must be relieved.
Modern interpretation
The load is too heavy for the structure. Either strengthen the support or reduce the burden — urgently, before something breaks. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary but careful measures. Do not pretend the beam is fine.
The Judgment · 卦辞
栋挠，利有攸往，亨。
“Tâ Kwo suggests to us a beam that is weak. There will be advantage in moving (under its conditions) in any direction whatever ; there will be success.” — James Legge, The Yî King (1882)
The six lines · 爻辞
Read from the bottom line upward. Each line pairs the received Chinese text with Legge's English translation.
藉用白茅，无咎。
“The first line, divided, shows one placing mats of the white mâo grass under things set on the ground. There will be no error.”
枯杨生稊，老夫得其女妻，无不利。
“The second line, undivided, shows a decayed willow producing shoots, or an old husband in possession of his young wife. There will be advantage in every way.”
栋桡，凶。
“The third line, undivided, shows a beam that is weak. There will be evil.”
栋隆，吉。有它，吝。
“The fourth line, undivided, shows a beam curving upwards. There will be good fortune. If (the subject of it) looks for other (help but that of line one), there will be cause for regret.”
枯杨生华，老妇得其士夫，无咎无誉。
“The fifth line, undivided, shows a decayed willow producing flowers, or an old wife in possession of her young husband. There will be occasion neither for blame nor for praise.”
过涉灭顶，凶。无咎。
“The topmost line, divided, shows its subject with extraordinary (boldness) wading through a stream, till the water hides the crown of his head. There will be evil, but no ground for blame.”
About changing lines
In a real I Ching reading, hexagrams are built by casting coins or yarrow stalks six times, bottom line first. Some lines come out “old” (unstable) — an old yin or old yang flips into its opposite, producing a second hexagram that shows where the situation is heading. The changing lines are the moving parts of your answer: read their individual line statements above, and they point to the direction of change.
Ask a question and cast the coins — free, with a plain-English interpretation grounded in the classical text.
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