蒙 → 剝
Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 6).
Line 2
九二 包蒙吉。納婦吉。子克家。
Nine in the second place means: To bear with fools in kindliness brings good fortune. To know how to take women Brings good fortune. The son is capable of taking charge of the household.
Line 3
六三 勿用取女。見金夫。不有躬。无攸利。
Six in the third place means: Take not a maiden who, when she sees a man of bronze, Loses possession of herself. Nothing furthers.
Line 6
上九 擊蒙。不利為寇。利禦寇。
Nine at the top means: In punishing folly It does not further one To commit transgressions. The only thing that furthers Is to prevent transgressions.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
履位乘勢，靡有絕斃。皆為隸圉，與眾庶伍。
Treading in rank, riding on power; never coming to ruin. All become servants and grooms, companions of the common folk.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
A spring beneath the mountain flows into a landscape of slow collapse. Those who once held rank and rode power's momentum find no sudden end — yet all become servants and grooms, mingling with the common multitude. The descent is gradual, not catastrophic: no execution, no exile, just the quiet erosion of status until the formerly great stand indistinguishable from those they once commanded. From Youthful Folly to Splitting Apart, the resonance is exact. The mountain rests upon the earth but its base is being stripped away line by line. Aristocrats do not fall in one blow; they are slowly ground down to commoner's rank, their authority peeling away like bark from a tree.
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