離

1. General usage: To leave, depart, go away; to separate, detach, or divorce. As a state: distance or isolation.

2. Cosmological/Yi Jing usage: Clinging or dependence on a support; brightness, illumination, fire, the sun, and lightning. It denotes visibility, clarity, and the capacity to reveal or provide orientation.

• Verb of Motion/Severance: Indicates a break in physical location or relationship.
• Verb of Relation: Describes functional dependence (to depend upon).
• Attribute/Nominal: Refers to brightness, clarity, or specifically the Li trigram/hexagram.

The term operates on two nearly opposite semantic axes: separation versus attachment. In cosmological contexts, "clinging" refers to functional dependence (e.g., a flame requiring fuel) rather than emotional obsession or stagnation.

• Trigram: ☲
• Hexagram: ䷝
• Semantic variant: U+79BB (𢽫)

• Contextual Priority: Unless the passage explicitly deals with elemental theory, optics, or the Yi Jing, "separation/departure" is the primary hypothesis.
• Surface vs. Object: When appearing near objects with bright surfaces (e.g., armor, shells, polished weapons), the term may refer to the lustre, visibility, or distinction created by the surface rather than the object itself.
• The Paradox of Clinging: In the specialized sense, brightness is not an independent quality but a phenomenon requiring a substrate; if the support is removed, the light vanishes.