升 → 剝
Hexagram 46: Pushing Upward → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 6).
Line 2
九二 孚乃利用禴。无咎。
Nine in the second place means: If one is sincere, It furthers one to bring even a small offering. No blame.
Line 3
九三 升虛邑。
Nine in the third place means: One pushes upward into an empty city.
Line 6
上六 冥升。利于不息之貞。
Six at the top means: Pushing upward in darkness. It furthers one To be unremittingly persevering.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
鰥寡孤獨，命祿苦薄。入室无妻，武子悲哀。
Widowed, orphaned, alone; fate and fortune bitterly thin. He enters his chamber but finds no wife; Master Wu grieves in sorrow.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wood grows within the earth, yet this verse portrays absolute desolation. Widowed, orphaned, alone and bereft — fate is bitter and fortune impossibly meager. One enters the house but finds no wife; a figure called Wuzi weeps in inconsolable sorrow. Every bond that should sustain a human life — marriage, kinship, companionship — has been stripped away until nothing remains but bare solitude. Mountain resting upon earth, the image of Splitting Apart, shows the structure eroding layer by layer from below. From Pushing Upward to Splitting Apart, the ascending impulse meets a foundation that crumbles beneath it. The wood grows, but the earth it rises through is collapsing, and each layer that falls takes another support with it.
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