Hexagram 55: Abundance → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart

Abundance
Thunder / Fire
Splitting Apart
Earth / Mountain
Changing LinesStable Lines

Changing Lines

This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 4).

Line 1

初九 遇其配主。雖旬无咎。往有尚。

meet with
one's own
pèiequal
zhǔand
suīeven if
xúnten days
no
jiùblame
wǎngto go ahead
yǒuis
shàngworth

Nine at the beginning means: When a man meets his destined ruler, They can be together ten days, And it is not a mistake. Going meets with recognition.

Line 4

九四 豐其蔀。日中見斗。遇其夷主。吉。

fēngso abundant
are one's
woven screens
the day
zhōngat mid-
jiànone may see
dǒuthe bushel constellation
or meet
that
hidden
zhǔmaster
promising

Nine in the fourth place means: The curtain is of such fullness That the polestars can be seen at noon. He meets his ruler, who is of like kind. Good fortune.

Trigram Changes

Upper TrigramThunder EarthThe Arousing → The Receptive
Lower TrigramFire MountainThe Clinging → Keeping Still

Yilin Verse

山沒丘浮,陸為水魚,燕雀无廬。

Heaven tilts northwest, earth southeast. Stars fall into the water, water covers the mountains. Nests are built in treetops where fish swim the roads — heaven and earth inverted, no knowing when it will return.

— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE

Commentary

Thunder and fire converge in Abundance, and the original verse depicts total inversion. Mountains sink and hills float; the land becomes a realm of fish, and swallows and sparrows lose their nests. This is a flood of cosmological proportions — the entire natural order is overturned. Mountains submerge while lowlands rise, terrestrial creatures become aquatic, and birds have nowhere to perch. The imagery evokes the great floods of Yu's era or the cosmic disorder before civilization imposed order. From Abundance to Splitting Apart, mountain rests upon earth in the image of erosion: Abundance pushed to its extreme collapses the very structures that sustained it. When everything inverts, the mountain slowly peels away from its foundation until nothing remains.

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