Hexagram 59: Dispersion → Hexagram 6: Conflict

Dispersion
Wind / Water
Conflict
Heaven / Water
Changing LinesStable Lines

Changing Lines

This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 4).

Line 4

六四 渙其羣元吉。渙有丘。匪夷所思。

huànscatter
one's own
qúngroup
yuánmost
promising
huànscatter
yǒuholds
qiūan accumulation
fěiit
the common
suǒplace
thought of

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.

Trigram Changes

Upper TrigramWind HeavenThe Gentle → The Creative
Lower TrigramWater Water

Yilin Verse

二牛生狗,以戌為母。荊夷上侵,姬伯出走。

Water flows backward up the mountain; cranes cry as they plunge into the abyss. Strange omens appear in succession — wolf-smoke rises from the frontier. The king's banner is rolled up in retreat toward the southern rivers.

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

Commentary

Wind over water — but here the original verse must be read. Two oxen beget a dog, with the dog-branch xu as its mother: an impossible birth signals cosmic inversion. The Jing and Yi barbarians press northward, and the Ji-surnamed lord flees south. This echoes the fall of the Western Zhou, when the Quanrong invasion drove the royal house eastward and peripheral peoples overran the heartland. Heaven and water moving in opposition form the image of Conflict — forces that should cooperate instead pulling apart. From Dispersion to Conflict, the scattering of cohesion becomes open confrontation: the center cannot hold, and what disperses is not tension but the social order itself. The lord's flight is the bitter fruit of dissolution turned adversarial.

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