遯 → 剝
Hexagram 33: Retreat → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 4, 5, 6).
Line 4
九四 好遯。君子吉。小人否。
Nine in the fourth place means: Voluntary retreat brings good fortune to the superior man And downfall to the inferior man.
Line 5
九五 嘉遯貞吉。
Nine in the fifth place means: Friendly retreat. Perseverance brings good fortune.
Line 6
上九 肥遯无不利。
Nine at the top means: Cheerful retreat. Everything serves to further.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
蝸螺生子,深目黑醜,似類其母,雖或相就,眾人莫取。
The snail bears its young; deep-eyed and dark. Resembling their mother in kind; though some may pair with them, the multitude will not take them.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven above the mountain crumbles into mountain over earth — Splitting Apart, where what was built is stripped away layer by layer. Snails spawn offspring with deep-set eyes, dark and ugly, resembling their mother. Though they may draw close to one another, no one else will accept them. The verse's imagery is blunt: the offspring inherit only their parent's worst features, and the wider world rejects them. From Retreat to Splitting Apart, the mountain's withdrawal accelerates into erosion. What retreats too far from the world produces only diminished copies of itself — each generation less adapted, less attractive, less viable. The mountain attached to the earth slowly peels away; the retreating lineage, closed off from outside influence, deteriorates through inbreeding of form and spirit alike.
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