家人 → 剝
Hexagram 37: The Family → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 5, 6).
Line 1
初九 閑有家。悔亡。
Nine at the beginning means: Firm seclusion within the family. Remorse disappears.
Line 5
九五 王假有家。勿恤吉。
Nine in the fifth place means: As a king he approaches his family. Fear not. Good fortune.
Line 6
上九 有孚威如。終吉。
Nine at the top means: His work commands respect. In the end good fortune comes.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
騎龍乘風，上見神公。彭祖受刺，王喬讚通。巫咸就位，拜壽無窮。
Riding the dragon, mounting the wind, he ascends to meet the Divine Lord. Pengzu receives the needle; Wang Qiao is praised for passage. Wu Xian takes his seat; longevity without end.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind from fire lifts the spirit beyond the household into celestial realms. Riding a dragon on the wind, one ascends to meet the divine lord. Pengzu receives the elixir-needle of longevity; Wang Qiao assists in opening the passage to immortality. The shaman Wu Xian takes his seat, and blessings of infinite longevity are bestowed. The verse gathers three legendary figures of transcendence: Pengzu the eight-hundred-year sage, Wang Qiao the Zhou prince who became an immortal, and Wu Xian the ancient shaman-administrator of the Shang court. From The Family to Splitting Apart, the mountain crumbles upon the earth — the material world dissolves. Yet the verse reads this dissolution as liberation: when the earthly structure falls away, the spirit rides free. Splitting Apart is not ruin but transcendence, the body returning to earth as the soul ascends.
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