Shihe: biting through what is in the mouth

Something in the mouth: fire over thunder, a figure shaped like a mouth

Shihe (噬嗑) is the 21st hexagram: Zhen (thunder) below, Li (fire) above. The yang lines are at the first, fourth and top places; the yin lines at the second, third and fifth. The Shuo Gua says "Zhen is moving" and "Li is clinging", and Li also stands for brightness.

Look first at the lowest and the top lines, both yang with a row of yin between them: that is the outline of Yi, the open mouth, with the two yang lines as the upper and lower teeth. Shihe is Yi with one more yang line at place four: something has been put in the mouth.

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Shihe beside Yi: Yi is a mouth, and Shihe has one more yang line in its fourth place.

The judgment and the Commentary: four characters, then the figure

The judgment is brief:

Success. Fitting for handling legal cases.

The word for "legal cases" means cases and punishments, so the judgment says the hexagram suits dealing with matters of that kind. Nothing more is said in the four characters, and the Commentary on the Judgments supplies the figure and the reason:

Something in the jaws: this is called Shihe; biting through, there is success. The firm and the yielding are distinct; it moves and it is bright; thunder and lightning join and shine forth. The yielding gains the center and goes up; though it is not in its proper place, it is fitting for handling legal cases.

The Commentary takes the name from the figure: something is "in the jaws", hence Shihe, and once it is bitten through there is passage, hence "success". "The firm and the yielding are distinct" describes yang and yin lines set apart in the figure; "it moves and is bright" is Zhen below moving and Li above shining; "thunder and lightning join" puts the two images together, and the last word means they become plain to see. The final sentence looks at line five: it is a yin line at the center of the upper trigram, so "the yielding gains the center and goes up". But the fifth place is a yang place and a yin line sits on it, hence "not in its proper place", and still "fitting for handling legal cases".

The Great Image: thunder and lightning, clear penalties, ordered laws

The Great Image is a single line:

Thunder and lightning: Shihe. The ancient kings accordingly made penalties clear and put the laws in order.

This Image does not say "something above something"; it goes straight to "thunder and lightning", and the subject is "the ancient kings". To make penalties clear is to state them plainly, and to put the laws in order is to set the statutes straight. Thunder startles and lightning lights things up; together they give the kings two tasks, penalties that are clear and laws that are in order.

The next hexagram, Bi (賁), says the opposite about the same kind of matter in its Image, "dare not decide cases"; it is left for that article.

The six statements: shackles at both ends, bites in the middle

Of the six statements, line one and the top line are not biting anything; each wears a restraint. Only the four between them do the biting.

Line one: "feet in shackles, the toes covered: no blame". The restraint is of wood and fits the feet, hiding the toes; the Small Image says "he cannot walk". The top line: "carrying the cangue, the ears covered: misfortune". The cangue sits on the shoulders and covers even the ears, and the Small Image says "his hearing is not clear". Three statements in the hexagram speak of something being covered: the toes in the lowest line, the ear in the top line, the nose in the second line between them, and the three parts run from low to high.

The four middle lines bite different things. Line two bites skin, soft flesh, so deeply that the nose sinks into it, and the Small Image says "it rides on the firm": this yin line sits on the yang line of line one. Line three bites old cured meat, which some sources write with a different character (昔, "old"), and the result is that he "meets poison"; the Small Image says "the place is not fitting". Line four bites dried meat on the bone and "finds metal arrows", with "fitting to stay on course in hardship: good fortune"; the Small Image says "not yet bright". Line five bites dried meat and "finds yellow gold": "staying on course in danger: no blame", and the Small Image says "he gets what fits".

Neighbors of Shihe: Bi, Jing, Jian, and "joining" in the Xu Gua

Turn Shihe upside down and you have Bi (賁), so the two are each other's reversed hexagram. Both keep yang lines at the two ends. Shihe puts its extra yang line at place four and Bi puts it at place three. Flip the polarity of all six lines and Jing (井) results. The nuclear hexagram is Jian (蹇); the structure of a hexagram shows where it comes from.

The Xu Gua attaches Shihe to Guan (觀) with this sentence:

Once there is looking, there is something to bring together; so Shihe follows. Shihe means joining.

Looking comes first and joining after it; the joining of Shihe is the jaws closing. As for what follows, the Xu Gua says that joining cannot stop at mere joining, so adornment, Bi, comes next.