乾 → 剝
Hexagram 1: The Creative → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 5 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 4, 5, 6).
Line 1
初九 潛龍勿用。
Nine at the beginning means: Hidden dragon. Do not act.
Line 2
九二 見龍在田。利見大人。
Nine in the second place means: Dragon appearing in the field. It furthers one to see the great man.
Line 4
九四 或躍在淵。无咎。
Nine in the fourth place means: Wavering flight over the depths. No blame.
Line 5
九五 飛龍在天。利見大人。
Nine in the fifth place means: Flying dragon in the heavens. It furthers one to see the great man.
Line 6
上九 亢龍有悔。
Nine at the top means: Arrogant dragon will have cause to repent.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
大禹式路，蚩尤除道。周匝萬里，不危不殆，見其所使，無所不在。
Great Yu inspected the roads; Chiyou cleared the way. Circling ten thousand li, neither perilous nor imperiled. Seeing those he commanded, he was present everywhere.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Yu the Great commands the royal chariot while Chi You clears the road ahead. Together they circuit ten thousand li, encountering no danger. Their envoys appear everywhere, reaching all corners. According to tradition, Chi You — the defeated war god — sometimes served as a path-clearing martial spirit, paired with Yu's civilizing authority. From Creative to Splitting Apart, the mountain crumbles upon the earth. Yet the verse inverts Bo's destructive image: with Yu's virtue and Chi You's force combined, even a world in decay holds no peril. When sovereign authority deploys both civic engineering and martial energy in coordination, the disintegration that Bo threatens is reversed into universal reach.
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