晉 → 剝
Hexagram 35: Progress → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 4).
Line 4
九四 晉如鼫鼠。貞厲。
Nine in the fourth place means: Progress like a hamster. Perseverance brings danger.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
天命玄鳥，下生大商，造定四表，享國久長。
Heaven commanded the dark swallow; it descended to give birth to Great Shang. Establishing order across the four quarters; the kingdom endures long.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire rises above the earth, and heaven commands the dark bird to descend and give birth to the great Shang dynasty. This is a direct quotation from the Shijing ode 'Xuan Niao' in the Shang Eulogies, celebrating the mythic origin of the Shang people: the ancestress Jiandi swallowed a dark bird's egg and conceived Xie, founder of the Shang lineage. The dynasty established order across the four quarters and enjoyed a long reign. From Progress to Splitting Apart, the transformation is paradoxical: a founding myth of enduring power paired with the hexagram of erosion. The mountain crumbles upon the earth. Even the mandate of heaven, once so brilliantly bestowed, eventually strips away — dynasty by dynasty, layer by layer.
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