同人 → 剝
Hexagram 13: Fellowship → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 4, 5).
Line 1
初九 同人于門。无咎。
Nine at the beginning means: Fellowship with men at the gate. No blame.
Line 3
九三 伏戎于莽。升其高陵。三歲不興。
Nine in the third place means: He hides weapons in the thicket; He climbs the high hill in front of it. For three years he does not rise up.
Line 4
九四 乘其墉。弗克攻。吉。
Nine in the fourth place means: He climbs up on his wall; he cannot attack. Good fortune.
Line 5
九五 同人先號咷而後笑。大師克相遇。
Nine in the fifth place means: Men bound in fellowship first weep and lament, But afterward they laugh. After great struggles they succeed in meeting.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
文山紫芝，雍梁朱草；長生和氣，王以為寶；公尸侑食，福祿來處。
Purple lingzhi on Wen Mountain; vermillion grass in Yong and Liang. Growing in life-giving harmony; the king treasures them. The host of the ancestral feast partakes; blessings and bounty come to abide.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven and fire form Fellowship, and here the communion is with the numinous earth itself. Purple zhi fungus grows on patterned mountains; vermilion grass flourishes in the lands of Yong and Liang. These are auspicious plants — harbingers of long life and harmonious qi. The king treasures them; the ancestral representative partakes of the sacred feast, and blessings flow to all. From Fellowship to Splitting Apart, the transformation seems paradoxical: abundance dissolving into erosion. Yet the verse suggests that the sacred herbs and ritual feast create a reservoir of virtue that can sustain the realm even as the mountain crumbles. The mountain rests upon the earth — and what is stored within endures.
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