剝 → 咸
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 31: Influence
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 5, 6).
Line 3
六三 剝之无咎。
Six in the third place means: He splits with them. No blame.
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
三人輦車，乘入虎家。王母貪叨，盜我犁牛。
Three men pull a cart, riding into the tiger's den. The queen mother, greedy and grasping, steals my plow-ox.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth decays into lake above mountain — Influence, where openness at the summit invites connection. Three men push a handcart, rolling into the tiger's domain. The Queen Mother grows covetous and steals the plough-ox. The three men entering danger together should evoke mutual support, but what they find is predatory: a 'Wang Mu' figure — here not the celestial goddess but perhaps an overbearing matriarch or local power — seizes the very ox needed for livelihood. The plough-ox represents productive capacity; its theft is an attack on sustenance itself. From Splitting Apart to Influence, the mountain's erosion opens the summit to the lake's receptivity, but receptivity without discernment invites exploitation. Influence works through sensitivity; here that sensitivity is weaponized by the covetous.
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