剝 → 蒙
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 6).
Line 2
六二 剝牀以辨。蔑貞凶。
Six in the second place means: The bed is split at the edge. Those who persevere are destroyed. Misfortune.
Line 3
六三 剝之无咎。
Six in the third place means: He splits with them. No blame.
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
齎貝贖狸，不聽我辭。繫於虎鬚，牽不得來。
Carving the boat to mark where the sword fell — the river has long since flowed on. Dropping a stone into a dry well — no echo returns.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth decays into mountain over water — a spring emerges from beneath rock, but the youth cannot yet see clearly. The original verse reads: 'Carrying cowries to ransom a fox-cat, it will not heed my words; tied to a tiger's whiskers, it cannot be pulled free.' One offers treasure to buy back something trivial, but the transaction fails; one grasps at a tiger's beard and cannot let go. Both images capture the futility of applying the wrong method to the wrong problem. The famous allusion 'marking the boat to find the sword' from the rewritten verse reinforces this perfectly. From Splitting Apart to Youthful Folly, decaying certainties give way to bewildered ignorance. The spring beneath the mountain flows, but the fool seeks water where the boat once was, not where the current runs now.
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