大過 → 剝
Hexagram 28: Great Exceeding → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 4, 5).
Line 2
九二 枯楊生稊。老夫得其女妻。无不利。
Nine in the second place means: A dry poplar sprouts at the root. An older man takes a young wife. Everything furthers.
Line 4
九四 棟隆。吉。有它吝。
Nine in the fourth place means: The ridgepole is braced. Good fortune. If there are ulterior motives, it is humiliating.
Line 5
九五 枯楊生華。老婦得其士夫。无咎无譽。
Nine in the fifth place means: A withered poplar puts forth flowers. An older woman takes a husband. No blame. No praise.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
廓落失業，跨禍度福，利無所得。
Vast and vacant, livelihood lost; straddling disaster, crossing toward fortune. Profit is nowhere to be found.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Lake over wind crumbles into mountain upon earth — Splitting Apart, where the bed is stripped to its frame. Empty and desolate, one's livelihood is lost. Straddling misfortune and groping for fortune, one gains nothing of value. The verse is stark: three short phrases of pure loss. No allusion softens the blow, no resolution follows. The livelihood is gone, the attempt to pivot from bad luck to good yields nothing, and profit is nowhere to be found. From Great Exceeding to Splitting Apart, the overburdened ridgepole completes its collapse. The mountain peeling away from the earth is the final stage of structural disintegration — what Great Exceeding threatened, Splitting Apart fulfills. There is no rescue here, only the honest acknowledgment that some collapses leave nothing to salvage.
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