頤 → 剝
Hexagram 27: Nourishment → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 6).
Line 1
初九 舍爾靈龜。觀我朶頤。凶。
Nine at the beginning means: You let your magic tortoise go, And look at me with the corners of your mouth drooping. Misfortune.
Line 3
六三 拂頤。貞凶。十年勿用。无攸利。
Six in the third place means: Turning away from nourishment. Perseverance brings misfortune. Do not act thus for ten years. Nothing serves to further.
Line 6
上九 由頤。厲吉。利涉大川。
Nine at the top means: The source of nourishment. Awareness of danger brings good fortune. It furthers one to cross the great water.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
弱足刖跟，不利出門。商賈無贏，折明為患。湯火之憂，轉解喜來。
Weak feet, severed heels; ill-favored to go out the door. Merchants gain no profit; broken brightness becomes affliction. The worry of scalding fire; yet trouble dissolves and joy arrives.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain over thunder shifts to mountain over earth — Splitting Apart, where the bed is stripped from below. Weak feet with severed heels, it is not auspicious to go out. Merchants make no profit; clarity is broken and becomes a source of trouble. Fire and scalding water threaten. Yet at the end, the crisis turns and joy arrives. The verse moves through progressive degradation — bodily maiming, commercial failure, intellectual collapse — before reversing at the last moment. From Nourishment to Splitting Apart, the mountain's nurture erodes from the base upward, stripping everything until only the bare peak remains. But even in the stripping, a seed of return persists.
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