Your reading

what opportunity does this challenge present?

Your reading resulted in the following hexagrams:

51

Hexagram 51, Shock

Key Questions

What must change?
What will continue?

Oracle

'Shock, creating success.
Shock comes, fear and terror.
Laughing words, shrieking and yelling.
Shock spreads fear for a hundred miles.
Someone does not lose the sacred ladle and libation.'

Shock is something that stirs, rouses and shakes you up – like an earthquake, or a violent thunderstorm. In ancient China, Heaven spoke through thunder, and this was an omen that the human world was to be brought back into harmony. Abruptly, your world is not working as you expect; the solid ground shifts under your feet, security slips away and mental constructs shatter; living reality has spoken.

Shock spreads out in waves of contagious fear and hysteria. Suddenly everyone is all too closely in touch with their own emotions – and with everyone else's – and all are reacting to one another. It is a time to hold on to what you most value, and take on responsibility for keeping it safe through the upheaval, like the priest who is charged with safeguarding the temple and altars from the past, for the future. Consider what remains constant and true when everything else is in turmoil. This doesn't necessarily mean resisting the shock itself, so much as keeping a still point in the midst of the tumult of reactions to it. Then you never lose your connection with the creative power that speaks through the storms.

Image

'Rolling thunder: Shock.
A noble one in fear and dread sets things in order and is watchful.'

Sequence

Shock follows from Hexagram 50, the Vessel:
'In the charge of the sacred vessel, none equals the eldest son, and so Shock follows. Shock means new beginnings.'

Pair

Shock forms a pair with Hexagram 52, Stilling:
'Shock begins; Stilling stops.'

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