剝 → 艮
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 6).
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
巨虵大鰌，戰於國郊。上下隔塞，逐君走逃。
A great serpent and giant catfish battle in the outskirts of the state. Above and below are blocked and severed; the lord is driven to flee.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth decays into doubled mountain — Keeping Still, the hexagram of arrested motion. A giant serpent and a great catfish battle at the state's outskirts. Above and below are blocked; the ruler is chased into flight. The combat between serpent and catfish — both creatures of water and darkness — at the city's edge suggests a struggle between two monstrous forces that leaves no room for legitimate authority. The ruler flees not from one enemy but from the chaos of their mutual destruction. From Splitting Apart to Keeping Still, the crumbling mountain yields to twin mountains that should provide stability through stillness. Yet here stillness is not peace but paralysis: the ruler is driven out, the borders are contested by monsters, and the doubled mountain becomes a doubled obstruction. To think beyond one's station when one cannot even hold one's ground is the cruelest irony of Gen.
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