Hexagram ䷔ ShìHé 噬嗑 / Bite Through
Shake off the obstacles
LéiDiàn ShìHé XiānWáng Yǐ MíngFá ChìFǎ
雷電 噬嗑 先王以明罰勅法
Thunder and Lightning, which is the natural phenomenon standing for Hexagram ShìHé 噬嗑, inspired by this, the former king clarified the rules of punishment and established laws.
Figure 1. Natural Image of the hexagram ShìHé噬嗑 — You might winder why I chose this image for the hexagram - there is neither thunder nor lightning here! When we study Yijing symbolism, it is important for us to break free from literal meanings and seek out the symbolic meanings behind the words. This is especially true with DaXiang (The Great Image) sentences.
On March 23, 2026, before my presentation at the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw, Poland, I took a walk in the Eye of the Sea Park. I saw this willow under the clear blue sky and immediately felt it would be a perfect image for hexagram ䷔ ShìHé - The clear blue sky representing the top trigram / Lightening and the leafing out willow represents the bottom trigram / Thunder.
We have seen that the common structure of a DaXiang sentence starts with four Chinese characters to describe the natural patterns of the top and bottom trigrams. In rare cases, we find two descriptive words instead of four, and they portray the top trigram first. Hexagram ䷔ ShìHé is the most rare case, in that the DaXiang structure uses two words and starts with the bottom trigram. Let’s delve into this further.
The first word, Léi 雷, means thunder or thundering. It is the symbolic name of the bottom trigram Zhèn 震, which stands for shake, instability, move, act, achieve, loud, or vibrate. The second word, Diàn 電, means lightning, electric, electricity, flash, bright, or brightness. It is another symbolic name for the bottom trigram Lí 離, which stands for radiant, shine, bright, colorful, beautiful, adherence, separation, departure, sun, fire, south, or enlightenment. The common symbolic name for the Lí trigram is Huǒ 火, Fire. Together, LéiDiàn means thunder and lightning, which is the natural phenomenon of Hexagram ䷔ ShìHé. If the general Yijing DaXiang sentence structure was followed for this hexagram, the order of the first two words would have been DiànLéi. Over two thousand years of debate have revealed only two prevailing opinions about why this is so: One school of thought holds that this was simply a mistake in the ancient text and therefore LéiDiàn should be changed to DiànLéi; The other considers LéiDiàn is the correct structure from the original text.
