渙 → 萃
Hexagram 59: Dispersion → Hexagram 45: Gathering Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 4, 6).
Line 2
九二 渙奔其机。悔亡。
Nine in the second place means: At the dissolution He hurries to that which supports him. Remorse disappears.
Line 4
六四 渙其羣元吉。渙有丘。匪夷所思。
Six in the fourth place means: He dissolves his bond with his group. Supreme good fortune. Dispersion leads in turn to accumulation. This is something that ordinary men do not think of.
Line 6
上九 渙其血。去逖出。无咎。
Nine at the top means: He dissolves his blood. Departing, keeping at a distance, going out, Is without blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
敝笱在梁，魴逸不禁。漁父勞苦，筐筥乾口，空虛无有。
The worn trap sits on the weir; the bream escape, unbounded. The fisherman toils in vain; baskets and pails dry empty, nothing within.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind over water scatters the catch from a broken net. The verse directly quotes the Shijing ode 'Bigou' — 'A tattered fish-trap sits on the weir, but the bream and tench slip through uncaught.' The fisherman labors in vain: his baskets are empty and his mouth is dry. This is the Shijing's original image of authority unable to restrain what it governs, traditionally read as the state of Lu's failure to control Lady Wen Jiang's scandalous liaisons with the Duke of Qi. The lake gathering upon the earth creates the image of Gathering — assembling what is dispersed. From Dispersion to Gathering, the broken fish-trap reveals the irony: one cannot gather what one has no means to hold. The fisherman's empty baskets mock the very idea of collection.
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