EN (English)
䷔
Hexagram 21 of 64
Biting Through
噬嗑 · Shì Kè
An open jaw with something wedged between the teeth. The hexagram is about clearing an obstruction decisively, and it is the book's main text on law and penalty.
justice
obstruction
decisiveness
penalty
- King Wen number
- 21 of 64
- Above
- ☲ Lí · Fire
- Below
- ☳ Zhèn · Thunder
- Composition
- Fire over Thunder
- Lines, bottom to top
- Solid · broken · broken · solid · broken · solid
- Chinese
- 噬嗑 · Shì Kè
The Judgment
Success. It helps to let justice be done.
The classic rarely endorses force this plainly. Some obstructions do not yield to patience, and the remedy is a clean decision.
The Image
Thunder and lightning: Biting Through. So the ancient kings made the penalties clear and set down the laws.
Clarity before enforcement. Lightning shows what is there and thunder follows, in that order.
What it means
Shi He is a picture: an open mouth, teeth above and below, and one solid line stuck in the middle. Something is preventing the jaw from closing, and the hexagram's answer is to bite through it.
The classic is normally cautious about force, so its endorsement here is worth noting. The obstruction in question is not a misunderstanding or a matter of timing. It is an obstacle that will remain until someone removes it, and the recommended instrument is law.
Four of the lines describe biting on progressively tougher material: tender meat, cured meat, dried gristle with a metal arrowhead in it, dried meat with gold. The sequence is a study in how difficult cases actually feel. The easy ones are overdone, the old ones taste bad, and the hardest one turns out to have something deliberately embedded in it. The classic's advice at that point is simply to recognise the difficulty and continue.
The first and last lines are about punishment rather than obstruction, and they frame the rest. Correction applied early costs a few toes. Correction deferred to the top of the figure takes the ears, which is the classic's way of saying the person stopped hearing long before.
In a reading
Biting Through as an answer says there is a genuine obstruction and it needs to be dealt with directly. Patience has been tried or would not work.
The counsel is decisiveness with clear grounds: know the rule you are applying, apply it early, and expect the case to be harder than it looks. If the matter involves a dispute or a formal process, the hexagram is unusually supportive of pursuing it.
The six lines
Read a line's text only when the cast made it a moving line. They are listed from the top of the figure down, the way the hexagram is drawn.
-
Nine at the top
His neck is locked in the cangue so the ears disappear. Misfortune.
The one who would not listen. The punishment has reached the head, and the ears are what has been lost.
-
Six in the fifth place
Biting on dried meat and finding yellow gold. Steadfast and aware of danger. No blame.
The ruling line. The hard case resolved, with value recovered from it, and no complacency.
-
Nine in the fourth place
Biting on dried gristle and finding a metal arrowhead. It helps to know it is hard and to hold on. Good fortune.
The difficult case. Something metal and deliberate is embedded in it, and the line says keep going anyway.
-
Six in the third place
Biting on cured meat and striking something tainted. A little humiliation, no blame.
Reopening an old matter and finding it has gone bad. Unpleasant and not disqualifying.
-
Six in the second place
Biting through tender meat until the nose disappears. No blame.
Going in too hard on something soft. Excess in an easy case, and no lasting harm.
-
Nine at the beginning
His feet are locked in the stocks so the toes disappear. No blame.
A first offence, punished small and early. The classic counts this as a mercy, because it stops there.
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