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䷲
Hexagram 51 of 64
The Arousing
震 · Zhèn
Thunder above thunder. The hexagram is a sudden shock arriving twice, and its central image is a man who goes on with the ceremony while everyone else jumps.
shock
thunder
composure
awakening
- King Wen number
- 51 of 64
- Above
- ☳ Zhèn · Thunder
- Below
- ☳ Zhèn · Thunder
- Composition
- Thunder over Thunder
- Lines, bottom to top
- Solid · broken · broken · solid · broken · broken
- Chinese
- 震 · Zhèn
The Judgment
Shock brings success. Shock arrives and there is alarm; then laughing words. The shock terrifies for a hundred miles, and he does not drop the sacrificial ladle.
The whole hexagram in one sentence. Everyone is frightened, the fright passes into laughter, and the officiant never stopped what he was doing.
The Image
Thunder repeated: Shock. So the noble person, in fear and trembling, sets their life in order and examines themselves.
The shock is put to use. The classic treats a scare as an occasion for an audit.
What it means
Zhen doubled is the classic's hexagram of shock, and its Judgment contains the image everyone remembers: thunder terrifies the country for a hundred miles, and the man conducting the sacrifice does not drop the ladle.
That is the standard being set. Not fearlessness, which the book never asks for, but continuity of action through fear. The Judgment is careful to include the alarm and then the laughing words, because the classic thinks the fright is normal and brief. What matters is whether it dislodges you from what you were doing.
The Image puts the shock to work. In fear and trembling, set your life in order and examine yourself. A scare is treated as an occasion for an honest audit, on the reasoning that you are unusually able to see clearly just after being startled.
The lines add practical notes. Do not chase what you lose in the upheaval; it comes back in seven days. If the shock leaves you dazed, moving at all is enough to avoid misfortune. And at the top, the most useful of them: when the trouble has hit your neighbour and not yet you, act on the warning, and accept that people will talk about it.
In a reading
Shock as an answer describes a sudden event: news, an interruption, something arriving without notice.
Its counsel is composure rather than reaction. Keep hold of what you were doing, do not chase what the disturbance scattered, and use the clarity that follows a fright to look at your own arrangements. If the shock landed near you rather than on you, the top line says treat it as a warning and act.
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
Shock brings collapse and terrified glancing about. Going on brings misfortune. If it has not yet reached you but has reached your neighbour, no blame. Your relations will have something to say.
The warning shot. Trouble arriving next door is information, and acting on it is worth the gossip.
-
Six in the fifth place
Shock goes back and forth. Danger. Nothing at all is lost, and there are things to be done.
Repeated shocks with no actual damage. The line refuses both panic and idleness.
-
Nine in the fourth place
Shock stuck in the mud.
Five characters. The jolt arrives and nothing moves, because the ground will not release it.
-
Six in the third place
Shock leaves one dazed. If the shock moves you to act, there is no misfortune.
Being stunned, and getting up. The line offers movement as the whole remedy.
-
Six in the second place
Shock comes with danger. A hundred thousand times you lose your valuables and must climb the nine hills. Do not chase them. In seven days you get them back.
Loss during upheaval, and an instruction not to pursue. Seven days is the classic's cycle for a return.
-
Nine at the beginning
Shock arrives and there is alarm; then laughing words. Good fortune.
The Judgment's own sequence in miniature. The fear is real and short.
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