剝 → 比
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 8: Holding Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 3, 5).
Line 3
六三 剝之无咎。
Six in the third place means: He splits with them. No blame.
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
明傷之初，為穆出交，以讒復歸。名曰豎牛，剝亂叔孫，餧於空丘。
At the start of the wounding of brightness, sent forth on Mu's behalf to negotiate, then returned through slander. Named Shu Niu, he brought ruin upon the house of Shusun, left to starve upon an empty hill.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth gives way to water upon earth — the image of Holding Together, yet here allegiance is weaponized. The verse names Shuniu, illegitimate son of Shusun Bao of Lu. 'At the start of the wounded brightness,' he was sent out to negotiate for Lord Mu, then used slander to engineer his own return. Known as 'Shuniu the Ox-Servant,' he systematically destroyed the Shusun clan: he murdered his half-brother Zhongren, then starved his own father to death, leaving the old man to perish on a barren hill. From Splitting Apart to Holding Together, the verse reveals the darkest perversion of bonds: Shuniu exploited every tie of kinship and loyalty, turning the structure of 'holding together' into the instrument of patricide. When the mountain of authority has already eroded, a parasite can hollow out even blood relations.
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