The Seba library treats Stripping in 7 passages, across 5 authors (including Liu I-ming, Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming, Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher).
ordinary people go along with the course of creation, which strips away yang by yin; when yang energy has waned away and become pure yin, how can they not die?
Liu I-ming identifies Stripping as the cosmological erosion of vital yang by yin, from which only the sage’s practice of reverse operation can preserve the essential seed of life.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
those who know this use true yin to preserve true yang; thus when one is true all are true, and stripping away cannot strip this away.
Cleary and Liu demonstrate that conscious alignment with the genuine principle renders one immune to Stripping’s dissolution — the adept transforms the stripping dynamic rather than succumbing to it.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
Outer accomplishing strips away the previous cycle, while inner bringing-forth prepares the new. The need for trenchant action in stripping is contrasted with the quiet yielding of field.
Ritsema and Karcher read Stripping structurally as the active dismantling of the exhausted cycle, positioned against passive receptivity as the necessary complement to inner renewal.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994thesis
Stripping it, without fault. Letting-go Above[and]Below indeed. Stripping the bed, using flesh. Pitfall. Stripping the bed, using flesh. Slicing close-to calamity indeed.
The line-by-line commentary distinguishes between a Stripping that releases attachment across all dimensions and a Stripping that penetrates to the flesh — the latter becoming calamitous when it reaches the living body of the person.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting
the will to live, that is necessary before there can be a fear of dying, is a part of the goodness that the envious breast has removed. the process of denudation described in 5 is therefore more serious, because more extensive
Bion locates the pathological extreme of Stripping in envious denudation, where the psyche is evacuated not of falsehood but of the very will to live — a stripping that forecloses rather than enables transformation.
, Learning from Experience, 1962supporting
the removal of psychic hands may be ritual. In old women’s healing rites in Eastern and Northern Europe, there was the concept of the Jung sapling being pruned with an ax in order to grow more full.
Estés situates the mythopoetic stripping of the maiden’s hands within archaic feminine ritual, reframing amputation as initiatory pruning that enables psychic fullness rather than permanent loss.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
Leaving aside the top line of the six, ‘straying from return,’ the other five lines all indicate a path of return, whether carried out intensely or calmly or with concerted effort.
In the context of hexagram Return, Liu I-ming invokes Stripping obliquely as the nadir from which all authentic return must depart, affirming that even extreme dissolution carries the potential for restoration.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986aside