萃 → 遯
Hexagram 45: Gathering Together → Hexagram 33: Retreat
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 3, 6).
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 6
上六 齎咨涕洟。无咎。
Six at the top means: Lamenting and sighing, floods of tears. No blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
三宿无主，南行勞苦。東里失利，喪其珍寶。
The inn shuts its door, refusing lodging. Sleeping in the open at the bridgehead, listening to the water flow. The bundle is stolen — only the clothes on one's back remain. At dawn, not knowing where to turn.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Lake upon earth gives way to heaven above the mountain, the strategic withdrawal of Retreat. The original verse reads: three nights without a host, traveling south in labor and hardship. In the eastern quarter profits are lost, and precious treasures are gone. This identical text appears also as 45-23, suggesting a textual doubling in the Yilin corpus. The traveler is utterly dispossessed: no shelter, no commercial success, no remaining wealth. From Gathering to Retreat, the transformation is stark. When the moment to withdraw arrives, one must leave everything behind. Heaven rises above the mountain, creating distance between the noble and the small. The retreating figure has lost all material gathering but preserved the one thing that matters: the self, intact and free.
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