Zhen to Sui: an heir long held down

Date not recorded · A friend of Takashima, asking about the heir of a family · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 51 Zhèn (The Arousing Thunder), line 5 moving, changing to Hexagram 17 Suí (Following).

Original text

友人某來。請占承嗣者氣運。筮得震之隨。爻辭曰。六五震往來厲。億无喪。有事。斷曰。震者。爲長男繼續父業之卦。卦體四陰在上。二陽在下。是陽爲陰制。二陽奮而欲出。故震。其家必向以女主專權。今震而至五。則陽氣已壯。正可出而任事。雖初至五。往來之途。備嘗危厲。惟其恐懼修省。兢兢業業。无忝厥宗。所謂宗廟享之。子孫保之。正在此也。故曰无喪有事。後果遵此占。

In plain words

A friend of Takashima came to ask about the fortunes of a family's heir. The cast gave Zhen with its fifth line moving, changing into Sui. The line reads: "Six in the fifth place: shock goes and comes; danger. Yet nothing at all is lost; there is work to be done."

Takashima's judgment: Zhen is the hexagram of the eldest son carrying on his father's work. In its figure, four yin lines lie above and two yang lines below; the yang is held down by the yin, and the two yang lines strain to break out, which is why it is called Shock. So this household has long been run by its mistress.

Now the shock has reached the fifth line: the yang is strong enough to come forward and take charge. Though the way from the first line to the fifth has been full of danger, if he stays watchful and examines himself, careful and diligent, and does not shame his forebears, then this is exactly "the ancestral temple receives offerings, and the descendants keep it". Hence "nothing is lost; there is work to be done".

The family afterwards acted on the reading.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the fifth line of Zhen is read.
The hexagram is the eldest son: Zhen stands for the first son, matching the heir being asked about.
The figure shows yang held down by yin: from the arrangement of lines Takashima infers that the mistress of the house has long been in control and the heir kept down. It is a bold reading of a family's inner workings from the shape of a hexagram.
"Shock goes and comes; danger" and "nothing lost, work to do": a dangerous road, but with care and self-examination the family line can be kept and its affairs taken in hand.

About the outcome

The text says only that the family followed the reading, not how it went. The claim that the mistress ran the house is Takashima's inference from the figure; the friend would have known whether it was true, but his answer is not recorded.

Applying it to your situation

"Shock goes and comes; yet nothing is lost": taking something over is bound to be nerve-racking, but with care you need not lose anything. In the responsibility you are about to take on, which alarms could you prepare for in advance?

Original: Takashima Kaemon, Takashima Ekidan (expanded edition), recorded by Yanagida Ikusaku, Chinese text by Wang Zhiben, 1901. Translation, notes and reflection by this site.

These are historical records kept by the diviner himself. The outcomes are his own account; this site uses them to study how the lines were read, not as evidence that divination predicts events.

Cast a hexagram · All of Takashima's cases · The 64 hexagrams