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First, notice that from Resolution to Splitting apart we have only incremented by one, numerically, but that in this case the result is reversal of every line in the hexagram. I simply have not yet fully absorbed this phenomenon, having only recognized it recently. Resolution was binary numeral 31, the 32nd hexagram in the sequence from the all-open-lines of K'un as zero to the all-full-lines of Ch'ien as sixty-three. So it is not entirely inappropriate that these two hexagrams should be complements each of the other.
Splitting Apart is the first hexagram of eight which have K'en, the Mountain, Stillness, the Youngest Son at their head. It is only happenstance that the survey of hexagrams conducted by numerical increment yields a treatment of each of the 8 trigrams as the public face of 8 hexagrams. Yet another interesting arrangement would be to group the hexagrams by lower or inner trigram, looking, for instance, at all eight of the hexagrams with Tui as the inner trigram. For now we content ourselves with the survey we have started.
Splitting Apart, then, is K'en, Keeping Still, Mountain, above, as the outer or public face of the hexagram, and K'un, The Receptive, Earth below as the lower or inner or private face of the hexagram. At first blush this would seem natural and stable, for a mountain is but earth heaped up upon the earth. But that seems at odds with the title given this arrangement.
From the Wilhelm/Baynes:
The dark lines are about to mount upward and overthrow the last firm, light line by exerting a disintegrating influence on it. The inferior, dark forces overcome what is superior and strong, not by direct means, but by undermining it gradually and imperceptibly, so that it finally collapses.
The lines of the hexagram present the image of a house, the top line being the roof, and because the roof is being shattered the house collapses...The yin power pushes up ever more powerfully and is about to supplant the yang power altogether.
One hates to disagree with the masters, so one can only express confusion and failure to understand. But on this I am sure, there is a terrible mistake being made over and again with the multi-ordinal terms superior and inferior. By and large the Wilhelm/Baynes uses these terms within a Western conceptualization where white is Good and black is Evil, where light is God and dark is the Devil. But that is not the way of the yin and the yang. Superior and inferior apply to yin and yang only with respect to the notion of yang being above, as the sky, and yin being below, as the ground. Neither is worth a damn without the other, and evil comes either from neither or both, depending on the view, for it is failure to balance and live in harmony with the ebb and flow of each which brings misfortune. Just as we play indoors when it rains and outdoors when it is sunny, so too we learn to comport ourselves one way when yang is in ascendance and another when yin prevails. But instead of living by a simple, binary, sunny or rainy distinction the trigrams offer 8 different variations from all sun to all dark, and we combine those trigrams in pairs to give rise to the 64 hexagrams, again giving us 64 shades of grey ranging from the all dark of K'un at numerical zero to Ch'ien at numerical 63. The point being that readings such as the quote, above, really are out of place for a true and deep understanding of the principles of the I Ching. There is no struggle between yin and yang, that's a holdover of Western thinking in the minds of the translators or possibly even a corruption from earlier sources. But there can be no doubt, yin and yang are equals, and there is no struggle between them, only dance and delight from which all things rise. Without their dance nothing exists. This is not your Western "light/dark, God/Devil, good/evil" dichotomy, and that one lesson may be the single most important distinction to cling to as you learn to use the oracle.
Back to the hexagram. Certainly, after being presented with the received title and the house metaphor one can be drawn to see, perhaps, a wish-bone type construct, with the two legs only barely held together. A useful arrangement, this kind of fork, good for tongs, etc. (I suddenly wonder if observations such as "a house about to collapse," were originally mnemonics, divorced from the actual reading or interpretation, but which over time suffered a failure to preserve the symbol/referent distinction. How would we ever know?)
The Karcher translation calls this hexagram "Stripping," and the reading is quite different indeed. I tend to take the Karcher as more reliable, but it is unarguably more inscrutable. On the other hand reliance on the Wilhelm/Baynes comes at the cost of this Western preoccupation with a Good-versus-Evil cosmology. And there probably is no way to reconcile it all. So we turn inward and meditate.
Finishing up the reading in the Wilhelm/Baynes I am again aware of what seems a total disconnect between the Image, which is fairly straightforward in looking at the trigrams, and the Judgment, which seems to come from what I have just today hypothesized as being a mnemonic value of the hexagram. At a later point I might one day try to resolve that disconnect. For this survey it will suffice to limit myself to study of the trigrams in relationship to each other giving rise to the hexagrams.
[The Mountain's] position is strong only when it rises out of the earth broad and great...those who rule rest on the broad foundation of the people. They too should be generous and benevolent, like the earth that carries all.
This certainly is in keeping with my first blush reading, which is a comfort.
Soon it will change.
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