The Book of Changes · Bo

Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart

Mountain (the peak) over Earth (the field)

Something being worn away from below, line by line, until only the top remains. The tradition does not counsel resistance here; it counsels not moving, because the season is the thing acting.

The image

The mountain rests on the earth and is being undermined. The reading is that those above secure their position by being generous to those below, since that is the part being eroded.

Mountain, above

Stillness, limit, and the place where a thing stops.

Earth, below

Yielding, carrying, and what receives without insisting.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1It starts at the bottom, out of sight, where the bed splits at the leg.
2. Line 2It is closer now, and still under the surface.
3. Line 3Splitting away, and no fault in it. Separating from company that was pulling you down.
4. Line 4It has reached the person. Nothing ambiguous left in it.
5. Line 5Order arriving from an unexpected quarter, through the household rather than the court.
6. Line 6One large fruit left uneaten. The seed survives the season that took everything else.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 23 is Gate 23, Assimilation.