豐 → 剝
Hexagram 55: Abundance → Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 4, 6).
Line 1
初九 遇其配主。雖旬无咎。往有尚。
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 3
九三 豐其沛。日中見沬。折其右肱。无咎。
Nine in the third place means: The underbrush is of such abundance That the small stars can be seen at noon. He breaks his right arm. No blame.
Line 4
九四 豐其蔀。日中見斗。遇其夷主。吉。
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.
Line 6
上六 豐其屋。蔀其家。闚其戶。闃其无人。三歲不覿。凶。
Six at the top means: His house is in a state of abundance. He screens off his family. He peers through the gate And no longer perceives anyone. For three years he sees nothing. Misfortune.
Trigram Changes
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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