離 → 萃
Hexagram 30: The Clinging Fire → Hexagram 45: Gathering Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 5, 6).
Line 1
初九 履錯然。敬之。无咎。
Nine at the beginning means: The footprints run crisscross. If one is seriously intent, no blame.
Line 3
九三 日昃之離。不鼓缶而歌。則大耋之嗟。凶。
Nine in the third place means: In the light of the setting sun, Men either beat the pot and sing Or loudly bewail the approach of old age. Misfortune.
Line 5
六五 出涕沱若。戚嗟若。吉。
Six in the fifth place means: Tears in floods, sighing and lamenting. Good fortune.
Line 6
上九 王用出征。有嘉。折首。獲匪其醜。无咎。
Nine at the top means: The king uses him to march forth and chastise. Then it is best to kill the leaders And take captive the followers. No blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
苛政日作，螟食華葉，割下啖上，民被其賊，秋無所得。
Harsh governance grows daily; locusts devour blossoms and leaves. Cutting from below to feed above; the people suffer the plunder. In autumn, nothing is gained.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Doubled fire meets the lake gathering upon earth: brilliance exposes parasitic governance. Harsh taxation grows daily, like leaf-eating caterpillars devouring blossoms. The lower is stripped to feed the upper, and the people suffer this plunder; by autumn, nothing remains to harvest. The caterpillar (ming) consuming flowers and leaves is a Shijing metaphor for rapacious officials who devour the people's substance. The seasonal arc — taxation devouring the growing season so that autumn yields nothing — makes the economic logic brutally clear. From The Clinging to Gathering, fire's clarity illuminates a gathering that has become predatory. The lake upon earth should pool abundance, but here the gathering is extraction, draining the fields so thoroughly that the communal harvest disappears entirely.
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