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䷏
Hexagram 16 of 64
Enthusiasm
豫 · Yù
Thunder bursting out of the earth. The hexagram is about roused collective feeling, the thing that makes people move together, and the classic is candid about how easily it curdles.
enthusiasm
momentum
music
readiness
- King Wen number
- 16 of 64
- Above
- ☳ Zhèn · Thunder
- Below
- ☷ Kūn · Earth
- Composition
- Thunder over Earth
- Lines, bottom to top
- Broken · broken · broken · solid · broken · broken
- Chinese
- 豫 · Yù
The Judgment
It helps to appoint helpers and set the armies marching.
Enthusiasm is treated as a practical resource. When people are willing, that is the moment to organise and to move.
The Image
Thunder bursts out of the earth: Enthusiasm. So the ancient kings made music to honour character, and offered it in splendour to the highest, with their ancestors present.
The classic's answer to roused feeling is to give it a form. Music, ceremony and shared occasion are what keep enthusiasm from dissipating.
What it means
Yu is thunder coming up out of the ground, the sound that gets everyone on their feet at once. The hexagram is about shared excitement and the momentum it generates, and it is written by someone who has watched such moods go wrong.
One yang line in the fourth place moves all five yin lines. That is enthusiasm in structural form: a single confident centre and a crowd that responds. The fourth line gets the best text in the hexagram, with friends gathering as naturally as hair gathers into a clasp.
The failures are catalogued carefully. Enthusiasm that announces itself gets misfortune at the first line. Enthusiasm performed for a superior brings regret, and so does hesitating until it is too late. The top line has the mood fully formed in the dark, which is the classic's phrase for being carried along without seeing.
Against all this it sets the second line, praised in the Great Treatise as the model of foresight: firm as a stone, and not needing a whole day to notice the mood has changed. And the Image sets enthusiasm to music, on the view that feeling with a form outlasts feeling without one.
In a reading
Enthusiasm as an answer says the energy is available and the time to organise it is now. Appoint people, start the thing, use the willingness while it exists.
Its warnings are all about authenticity and timing. Do not perform the feeling, do not wait for it to peak, and check whether your own excitement is still attached to anything real. The second line is the standard: notice the change early and act on it the same day.
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.
-
Six at the top
Enthusiasm in the dark, fully formed. If there is a change, no blame.
Carried away past the point of seeing clearly. The classic leaves the door open, on condition of an actual change.
-
Six in the fifth place
Steadfast and ill, and lives on and on.
Chronically constrained and not finished. An oddly consoling line: the condition persists, and so do you.
-
Nine in the fourth place
The source of the enthusiasm. Great gains. Do not doubt. Friends gather round as a clasp gathers hair.
The ruling line, and the only strong one. Confidence at the centre draws people in on its own.
-
Six in the third place
Enthusiasm turned upward for favour brings regret. Hesitating brings regret.
Two ways to get it wrong: performing for someone above you, or waiting so long the moment passes.
-
Six in the second place
Firm as a rock. Not even a whole day. Steadfastness brings good fortune.
Recognising the turn before the day is out. The classic quotes this line elsewhere as its model of knowing the seeds of things.
-
Six at the beginning
Enthusiasm that announces itself. Misfortune.
Loud, self-advertising excitement at the bottom of the figure. The text does not hesitate.
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