Meaning
Five broken lines have risen from below and one whole line is left at the top: in the language of the Han calendars, yin has nearly taken the figure. 剝 means to strip, to peel, to pare away, and the trigrams show a mountain that is being eroded back into the plain it stands on. The Judgment is one of the bleakest in the book: no movement in any direction is advantageous.
The Image finds a lesson for those above: the mountain rests on the earth, and those in high places secure their own position only by being generous to those beneath them. Among the twelve calendar hexagrams 剝 is the ninth lunar month, late autumn, just before 坤 and the depth of yin. In our reading the hexagram describes a season of loss in a structure, and the tradition keeps its eye on what survives.
The lines
The lines break a bed apart from the bottom up: the legs, then the frame, and then the one lying on it. The third stands among those doing the breaking and is not blamed, since it alone corresponds to the whole line at the top; the fifth leads the others like "a string of fishes", in Legge's words, into the favour of the palace. The top line is the great fruit left uneaten, the seed from which the next hexagram's return begins.
Its pair is 復, hexagram 24, the same figure upside down; within 剝 lies 坤, hexagram 2, and every line flipped gives 夬, hexagram 43.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 剝 when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, which puts 艮 mountain above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 0, counted as 8, which puts 坤 earth below. Which line moves depends on what the whole total leaves on six, and each line turns the figure into a different hexagram:
- Line 1 (初六) moving: becomes 27 頤 Yí, Nourishment
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 4 蒙 Méng, The Untaught Mind
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 52 艮 Gèn, Stopping
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 35 晉 Jìn, Advance
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 20 觀 Guān, Looking Out
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 2 坤 Kūn, Earth's Yielding
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 2 坤 Kūn, Earth's Yielding. Everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour has the same cast, so the figure describes a moment, not a person.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Trigram virtues (Shuogua, chapter 7)
- 坤 yielding, compliant below; 艮 stopping, at rest above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- mother below, youngest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- belly and ox below; hands and dog above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Earth below, Earth above. The Han assignment of 梅花易數, book 1, also used by Jing Fang; not stated as such in the Zhouyi sourced
- Month in the Han calendars (sovereign hexagram)
- The ninth lunar month (戌), with one yang line sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down: 24 復 Fù, Return; every line flipped: 43 夬 Guài, Breakthrough sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 23, from 48.875° to 54.5° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Stripping Away: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 剝 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Po indicates that (in the state which it symbolises) it will not be advantageous to make a movement in any direction whatever.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- A mountain resting on the earth; those above strengthen those below to secure their own position.
- The Han calendars (1st century BCE)
- The hexagram of the ninth lunar month, the month of 戌: yin growing from below.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 艮 above when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, 坤 below when the same total with the hour leaves 0.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 23 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- A mountain resting on the earth, its top worn away: what was built is being stripped; not a time to push on but to broaden the base, and the one fruit left uneaten holds the seed.
Claims about it
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Gate 23 of Human Design, at 48.875° to 54.5° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 23.
falseWhat the record shows: The wheel is Shao Yong's circle rotated by Ra Uru Hu in 1987 to 1989 so that hexagram 41 starts at 2° Aquarius. No Chinese source we found puts the hexagrams on degrees of the zodiac.
-
Being born under 剝 Bō fixes a person's character.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A modern reading with no source in the tradition. The Zhouyi has no birth hexagram; the cast reads a figure, not a person, and everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour shares it.
