Zhen · Thunder

Meaning

Zhen ☳ is thunder: a whole, yang line at the bottom under two broken ones, a force rising from below and breaking through what lies on it, as the first thunder of spring wakes the ground. The Discussion of the Trigrams gives it one word, movement, and makes the east and the spring its place: it is there, it says, that all things come forth. In the family of the trigrams it is the eldest son, the first of the three whose single yang line climbs from the bottom.

The tradition reads in it initiative and energy that wakes things up: the first step, the start of a project, the courage to begin before everything is ready. Its difficulty is the same force without its season, haste, a start made too often and carried through too seldom, a loud voice where a quiet one would carry further. Thunder clears the air; it is only the beginning of the weather.

Its opposite is Xun ☴, wind, a broken line below two whole ones, the eldest daughter. The two are the thunder and the wind that the Book of Changes pairs in the hexagram Heng, constancy, which the Flying Stars name in the pairing of the 3 and the 4: the push that starts and the gentleness that keeps going.

In practice

• The Kua number: Zhen is Kua 3, of the East group. Its four supportive directions are the south (Growth), the north (Restoration), the south-east (Harmony) and the east, its own place (Stability).
• Both counts at once: Kua 3 is the only Kua the yin and the yang counts give in the same years, those whose digits add up to 8, such as 1988, 1997 and 2006.
• A Zhen house: a home sitting in the east and facing west is a Zhen house of the East group.
• The Flying Stars: the east is the Zhen palace, home of the 3 Jade, the star of drive and ambition, which the classics read, out of its time, as the quarrelsome star that asks for patience.
• The 24 mountains: Zhen’s 45° hold Jia, Mao and Yi, from 67.5° to 112.5°; Mao, due east, is the Rabbit’s branch.

Across traditions

• In the Book of Changes Zhen doubled is the 51st hexagram, thunder upon thunder: the shock that startles, then laughter after it, and the calm of one who keeps hold of what matters while the thunder rolls. Human Design’s Gate 51 is that hexagram.
• In Western astrology the middle of Zhen’s season is the spring equinox, when the Sun enters Aries, the start of the Western zodiac and its first fire sign; the Chinese east is spring and wood, Aries fire: the same moment, read in two languages.
• In Japan the eight trigrams came with the Book of Changes and onmyōdō; Zhen, shin, kept its thunder and its east there.

Origin and history

The Discussion of the Trigrams, one of the Ten Wings of the Book of Changes, written between the Warring States and the Han, gives Zhen its east and its spring, the foot among the parts of the body, the dragon among the animals, and a run of images that all move: the great road, young green bamboo, reeds, a horse that neighs well. In the Early Heaven arrangement, which Shao Yong and the Song scholars traced to Fu Xi, Zhen stands in the north-east; in the Later Heaven arrangement, traced to King Wen, where the year begins, it holds the east.

Richard Wilhelm’s translation of 1924 named it “the Arousing”. The compass schools set it in the east of the luopan, and the Ba Zhai Ming Jing makes it the trigram of the third Kua; the Flying Stars, after Shen Zhureng, read its palace as the home of the 3.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune draws Zhen from its lines, whole, broken and broken from the bottom up, rather than from a font. The trigram holds the east in the Later Heaven order and carries the Lo Shu’s number 3, which makes it Kua 3: for the yang count a year whose digits reduce to 8, so that 11 − 8 = 3; for the yin count the same year, since 4 + 8 = 12, which reduces to 3. Each year turns at Lichun.

Its directions follow from the lines. The south’s Li differs from Zhen in its top line alone, Growth; the north’s Kan in its two lower lines, Restoration; the south-east’s Xun in all three, Harmony. The four trigrams of the West group give Zhen’s four challenging directions.

Correspondences