震 · zhèn · ☳
Thunder
Thunder moves. It is the foot, the dragon, the eldest son; the great road, and green bamboo breaking through.
- Quality
- Movement that wakes
- Image
- thunder
- In the family
- the eldest son
- Direction
- east
- Season
- spring
In a reading
Zhen brings a beginning, a surge of energy or news that shakes you. Move when you feel the push, and if something startles you, let it wake you up rather than freeze you.
The image
One solid line at the bottom, under two open ones: a force pushing up from below and breaking through. This is thunder, the jolt that wakes everything up. The Shuogua (說卦) gives it the quality 動, to move: action starts with Zhen.
Symbols
- Family: the eldest son. The Shuogua says the mother receives the father's yang here for the first time, so the yang line lands in the first place.
- Body: the feet (足), which set off.
- Animal: the dragon (龍), which stirs and rises.
It's also linked to the great road, green bamboo and shoots that come up hard.
Direction and season
In the Later Heaven arrangement, Zhen sits in the east, in spring, when life breaks out of the ground. The Shuogua opens its round of the year with 帝出乎震, the Lord on High comes forth in Zhen: the cycle begins here. In the Earlier Heaven arrangement, Zhen sits in the northeast.
In a hexagram
As the lower trigram, Zhen is an impulse born inside, a beginning. As the upper trigram, it's something that arrives suddenly and shakes things. Beneath earth it makes hexagram 24, Coming Back, the return of yang; above earth, hexagram 16, Passion. Doubled, thunder over thunder is hexagram 51, Shock: the crash that passes and leaves everyone wide awake.
To see all eight side by side, read the guide to the trigrams.