剝 → 萃
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 45: Gathering Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 5).
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.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
兩目不明，日奪無光。脛足跛曳，不可以行，頓於丘旁。亡妾莫逐，嵬然獨宿。
Both eyes lack sight; day robs the sun of its light. Shins and feet lame and dragging, unable to walk; halted beside the hill. The lost concubine is not pursued; desolate and alone, one sleeps in solitude.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth decays into lake upon earth — Gathering, where all things converge at the altar. Both eyes are dim, daylight robbed of its radiance. Legs lame and dragging, one cannot walk, collapsing beside a hill. A lost concubine cannot be pursued; one sleeps alone in desolate solitude. The verse accumulates images of incapacity: blindness, lameness, abandonment. The body fails in every dimension — sight, mobility, companionship. This is Splitting Apart enacted upon the person rather than the landscape. From Splitting Apart to Gathering, the mountain's decay should pool into communal assembly, yet here the individual is too broken to join any gathering. The lake upon the earth draws all things together, but one who cannot see, walk, or keep companionship is excluded from the congregation, left stranded on the hill's edge.
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