萃 → 剝
Hexagram 45: Gathering Together → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 5).
Line 3
六三 萃如嗟如。无攸利。往无咎。小吝。
Six in the third place means: Gathering together amid sighs. Nothing that would further. Going is without blame. Slight humiliation.
Line 4
九四 大吉无咎。
Nine in the fourth place means: Great good fortune. No blame.
Line 5
九五 萃有位。无咎匪孚。元永貞。悔亡。
Nine in the fifth place means: If in gathering together one has position, This brings no blame. If there are some who are not yet sincerely in the work, Sublime and enduring perseverance is needed. Then remorse disappears.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
三宿无主，南行勞苦。東里失利，喪其珍寶。
Three nights without a host; southward travel brings only toil. In the eastern quarter, profit is lost; gone are all precious treasures.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Lake upon earth gives way to mountain resting upon earth, Splitting Apart. Three nights without a host, traveling south in exhaustion. In the eastern quarter profits are lost, and precious treasures vanish. The verse describes a traveler stripped of everything: no shelter, no gains, no possessions. The 'three nights without a host' echoes the ritual rule that a dismissed minister must not find lodging within three days of leaving his state, a mark of thoroughgoing exile. From Gathering to Splitting Apart, the transformation is devastating: what was gathered is peeled away layer by layer. The mountain attached to earth slowly erodes from the top, and here every support, host, profit, treasure, is stripped in sequence until nothing remains but bare ground.
The Six Lines app includes all 4,096 Yilin verses, each with original ink brush artwork and full commentary. Download on the App Store