艮 → 剝
Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 3).
Line 3
九三 艮其限。列其夤。厲熏心。
Nine in the third place means: Keeping his hips still. Making his sacrum stiff. Dangerous. The heart suffocates.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
二女共室，心不聊食。首髮如蓬，憂常在中。
Two women share a room, their hearts too troubled to eat. Hair like tangled weeds; worry dwells constantly within.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Twin mountains stand still, but within the chamber two women share a room, their hearts so troubled they cannot eat. Hair disheveled like tangled weeds, anxiety lives permanently in their breast. The image recalls the Shijing's domestic tension: women confined together in jealousy or grief, each the other's rival or mirror of misery. From Keeping Still to Splitting Apart, mountain rests upon the earth but its base is eroding. Splitting Apart strips away support layer by layer until only the topmost line remains. The two women's mutual misery is this erosion made human — each presence diminishes the other, and the shared dwelling becomes a site of slow collapse rather than shelter.
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