剝 → 同人
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 13: Fellowship
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 4, 5, 6).
Line 1
初六 剝牀以足。蔑貞凶。
Six at the beginning means: The leg of the bed is split. Those who persevere are destroyed. Misfortune.
Line 4
六四 剝牀以膚。凶。
Six in the fourth place means: The bed is split up to the skin. Misfortune.
Line 5
六五 貫魚。以宮人寵。无不利。
Six in the fifth place means: A shoal of fishes. Favor comes through the court ladies. Everything acts to further.
Line 6
上九 碩果不食。君子得輿。小人剝廬。
Nine at the top means: There is a large fruit still uneaten. The superior man receives a carriage. The house of the inferior man is split apart.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
雄處弱水，雌在海濱。別將持食，悲哀於心。
The male dwells by the weak waters; the female at the ocean shore. Parted, each carrying food alone; grief and sorrow in the heart.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth strips away, revealing heaven and fire moving together — Fellowship, but of the most painful kind. The male bird dwells by the Weak Water, the female at the ocean's edge: two mates separated by impassable distances. A subordinate carries food on a separate journey, grief heavy in the heart. The Weak Water is the mythological river near Kunlun too thin to float even a feather — an absolute barrier. The verse transforms Fellowship's ideal of union through shared purpose into its agonizing negative: those who belong together cannot cross the distance between them. From Splitting Apart to Fellowship, the mountain's erosion scatters what was once joined. True fellowship requires fire and heaven to move in the same direction, but here the paired birds can only face each other across an uncrossable void.
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