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Hexagram 41 — Shi He, Biting Through
Chronological no. 41 (binary-weight order) · King Wen no. (traditional) 21 · 噬嗑
By Anibal Edelberto Amiot — Updated October 1, 2026
the middle daughter
the eldest son
Thunder and Lightning unite: the image of biting through. Shock and light strike together, one revealing what the other breaks — nothing can hide for long beneath such a union of force and clarity. This is the figure of the decisive cut illuminated by truth. Thus the ancient kings made punishments clear and kept the laws watchful: cutting rightly first requires seeing rightly.
Cutting away the false to weld together what is true. There are obstacles that cannot be worked around — they must be crossed, bitten through, overcome by a clean decision. This line teaches that clarity sometimes needs hardness to assert itself, and that this hardness, rightly used, is not violence but justice.
The six lines
At the base of the earth, fullness stirs: the yang onset that carried the whole figure now yields its place.
The receptive earth reaches its fullness: the silent welcome that carried the lower figure is about to assert itself.
At the threshold between earth and man, suppleness gathers weight: what once yielded by nature is about to harden.
In the action of man, fullness meets its limit: the initiative that led the figure folds back upon itself.
At the sage's seat, emptiness fills: the suppleness that governed with discretion gathers a new force.
At the summit, fullness completes its course and breaks: what had culminated cannot go further without turning back.
Source: La Livrée d'Hermès, Anibal Amiot — chapter 7.1 (pp. 63–68). French version of this page.
For the notions used here — magic square, layer and casting, the Yi Jing — see the project lexicon.
The patterns of this hexagram
This hexagram is the binary complement of hexagram 22 — Jing, The Well (63 − 41 = 22): its patterns have exactly the same shape, only their colours are permuted. Here are the eight patterns of hexagram 22, one for each admissible family.
Bases — YANG mutant
Bases — YANG
Pair of two — YANG + YIN mutant
Pair of two — YIN mutant + YANG mutant
Pair of two — YIN + YANG
Pair of two — YIN + YANG mutant
Triple — without YANG
Triple — without YANG mutant
Neighbouring hexagrams
40 — Jin, Progress · 42 — Wei Ji, Before Completion
Hexagrams sharing a trigram
Same upper trigram (☲ Li): 40 — Jin, Progress · 42 — Wei Ji, Before Completion · 43 — Kui, Opposition · 44 — Lu, The Wanderer · 45 — Li, That Which Clings, Fire · 46 — Ding, The Cauldron · 47 — Da You, Possession in Great Measure
Same lower trigram (☳ Zhen): 1 — Fu, Return · 9 — Zhen, The Arousing · 17 — Zhun, Difficulty at the Beginning · 25 — Sui, Following · 33 — Yi, Nourishment · 49 — Yi, Increase · 57 — Wu Wang, Innocence
