Bō, hexagram 23

The wine skin and the knife

Lay bare what is in or behind things. It is dangerous when on the outside it seems all quiet and fine, and one does not know the inside. And when things do not work the way they should, then find out if there is something rotten behind the scene. And also: the outside of things decays some day, but if there is a strong and true inside, this will survive and find a new form. The ripe fruit of the top line is not eaten, it will rot away. If there is a noble inside - the seeds - it is an improvement or progress. If there is no good inside - the small man, no seeds - it falls apart and nothing remains.

Hex.23

BO: According to one theory, the left part Lù (1) originates from a picture of a windlass or winch drawing water for irrigation, which would symbolize good luck (protection of the harvest). 'Altar' might have been added to emphasize the meaning 'good luck'. It can be found carved in good luck charms.
According to Wieger it is a tree with chopped-off branches, with an axe. An old form of the character looks like that, but I found an older one which looks different. Li LéYi (p.205) and Wang HongYuan (p.116) both show a picture of a hanging sack, with drops falling from it. Wang: a sack for filtering wine. And according to Wu JingNuan there was an alternate old form (knife +) divine: to foretell by cutting away.
All over the world there was a practice to cut an animal open and 'read' the entrails. So I guess it is a sack or an animal (wine sacks were made of animals too) which was used to separate the essential from the appearance. The wine from the dregs, or the inside information from the outside looks. Together with the radical 'altar' it means good luck, together with 'water' clear. And here, together with 'knife' to peel or flay. My idea is, that the last one refers especially to the reading of omens by flaying an animal.
BO: shell, peel, flay, skin, cut, pluck, lay bare, to ruin, break.

The trigrams: Mountain on the Earth.
The mountain is attached to the earth, Stripping. The high ones make their house peaceful by generosity to the low ones.

More about hex.23 and 24
See the article on this page by Harmen