🔮 The Oracle Speaks
In the shadowed jaws of the mountain, thunder stirs the hidden springs of life. What you swallow shapes the thunder of your spirit; choose sustenance that awakens, not dulls. Nourish the root, and peaks shall rise unbidden; feed wisely, or the storm devours its own.
✨ Essence
This hexagram reveals the art of true nourishment, urging you to discern what truly sustains your body, mind, and soul in a world of fleeting indulgences. It calls for mindful intake—selecting experiences, relationships, and habits that build lasting vitality rather than temporary highs. Embrace quality over quantity, for proper sustenance fortifies your inner thunder, propelling you toward resilient growth. In modern life, this means curating your inputs: wholesome food, inspiring media, and uplifting company to fuel authentic progress.
The lower trigram of Thunder ignites dynamic energy from below, like a storm's rumble awakening the earth, providing the raw power for growth. The upper trigram of Mountain imposes stillness and boundaries above, channeling that wild force into structured containment, preventing wasteful overflow. Their union forms a vessel of careful discernment, where thunder's impulse meets mountain's restraint, creating a sacred space for selective nourishment. This interplay teaches restraint amid excitement, ensuring vitality is preserved and directed purposefully.
🖼️ The Image
A colossal stone basin perched on thunder-riven cliffs, where crystalline springs bubble forth, inviting only the purest elixirs to fill its depths while repelling tainted streams. Birds of vibrant plumage perch at its rim, sipping selectively to fuel their soaring flights. This basin pulses with inner lightning, transforming chosen nourishment into wings of enduring strength.
🌟 Divination Insights
⚠️ Shadow Warning
The peril lies in mindless consumption that bloats the form while starving the spirit. Indiscriminate intake invites thunderous disruptions and hollow vitality.
🎁 Gift Revealed
Embracing this energy grants profound vitality and clarity in choices, turning daily sustenance into a superpower of growth. It unveils the alchemy of turning simple nourishments into enduring peaks of achievement.
❓ Question Guidance
This Hexagram Best Answers Questions About:
Questions on diet and wellness routines; relationship compatibility for mutual support; career sustainability and resource management.
Ask Yourself:
"What truly nourishes my highest potential right now?"
⏰ Timing
Duration of Influence: 3 to 6 months of gradual integration
Action Window: Within the next full moon cycle for initiating nourishing changes
📊 The Six Lines
Line 1: The Foundation
At the outset, ground your nourishment in simple, instinctual needs that build unshakeable roots. Seek fundamental fuels like restful sleep and hearty whole foods to spark initial vitality. Avoid overreaching; steady intake now prevents future famines.
When Changing: When this line moves, foundational habits shift, urging you to reassess basic self-care routines for renewed energy flow.
Line 2: The Inner Growth
Nurture your inner world with quiet reflection and gentle emotional feeds, fostering hidden strengths. Choose thoughts and solitude that heal rather than drain. This stage blooms resilience from within.
When Changing: A moving line here signals evolving inner needs, prompting gentle adjustments to emotional diets for deeper harmony.
Line 3: The Threshold
At this pivotal crossing, temptation tests your choices—reject excess that burdens the spirit. Discern between true sustenance and seductive distractions that lead to stagnation. Boldly shut the gates to unworthy inputs.
When Changing: If changing, this warns of transitional pitfalls, calling for swift correction to avoid nourishing regrets.
Line 4: The Outer Beginning
Venture outward to source nourishment from trusted allies, but test offerings with wisdom. Build networks that provide mutual enrichment without dependency. Initiate exchanges that elevate all involved.
When Changing: Movement here transforms external relations, opening doors to abundant, reciprocal sustenance.
Line 5: The Ruler
From the leadership perch, guide others by example in wise nourishment, influencing through empowered choices. Your vitality inspires; share knowledge of sustaining practices generously. Peak position demands integrity in what you endorse.
When Changing: When this shifts, leadership evolves, revealing new ways to sustain influence through adaptive nourishment.
Line 6: The Culmination
At the summit, beware overindulgence or neglect—true completion lies in balanced closure. Release what no longer serves, allowing space for renewal. Excess here topples the nourished peak.
When Changing: A changing top line heralds culmination's end, transitioning to fresh cycles of sustenance.
The classic text — James Legge, 1882
The judgment, the image and the line statements below are James Legge's translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, vol. XVI, The Yî King (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882), now in the public domain. The judgment and line statements are quoted word for word from the Wikisource transcription of this chapter (revision 11938717, fetched 2026-09-30). The image comes from the scan page named beside it. Legge's notes are left out. Words in round brackets are Legge's own additions to the terse Chinese, and his spellings of Chinese names are kept as printed. The other sections of this page are this site's modern reading, not Legge's.
The judgment
Î indicates that with firm correctness there will be good fortune (in what is denoted by it). We must look at what we are seeking to nourish, and by the exercise of our thoughts seek for the proper aliment.
The image
From Legge's Appendix II, Treatise on the Symbolism of the Hexagrams: the paragraph he calls ‘the Great Symbolism’, which reads the figure as its two trigrams and draws a lesson from them. It is one of the appendixes, a commentary on the text, not part of the judgment or the line statements. Scan page 335 (printed p. 301), corrected by eye against the page image.
(The trigram representing) a mountain and under it that for thunder form Î. The superior man, in accordance with this, (enjoins) watchfulness over our words, and the temperate regulation of our eating and drinking.
The lines, counted from the bottom
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Line 1 (bottom)
The first line, undivided, (seems to be thus addressed), 'You leave your efficacious tortoise, and look at me till your lower jaw hangs down.' There will be evil.
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Line 2
The second line, divided, shows one looking downwards for nourishment, which is contrary to what is proper; or seeking it from the height (above), advance towards which will lead to evil.
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Line 3
The third line, divided, shows one acting contrary to the method of nourishing. However firm he may be, there will be evil. For ten years let him not take any action, (for) it will not be in any way advantageous.
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Line 4
The fourth line, divided, shows one looking downwards for (the power to) nourish. There will be good fortune. Looking with a tiger's downward unwavering glare, and with his desire that impels him to spring after spring, he will fall into no error.
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Line 5
The fifth line, divided, shows one acting contrary to what is regular and proper; but if he abide in firmness, there will be good fortune. He should not, (however, try to) cross the great stream.
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Line 6 (top)
The sixth line, undivided, shows him from whom comes the nourishing. His position is perilous, but there will be good fortune. It will be advantageous to cross the great stream.
🌍 Modern Applications
💼 Career & Work
Focus on roles and projects that provide intellectual and emotional fulfillment, avoiding burnout from unfulfilling tasks. Build a professional diet of skill-building opportunities and supportive mentors to sustain long-term success. Prioritize work-life balance to prevent depletion.
💕 Relationships
Seek bonds that mutually feed growth, like partners who inspire shared vitality. Nourish connections through honest communication and shared rituals, weeding out draining dynamics. True love thrives on reciprocal sustenance.
🏃 Health & Wellness
Purify your intake with nutrient-dense foods and mindful movement to ignite inner thunder. Address mental health by curating positive inputs, reducing stress through grounding practices. Holistic wellness emerges from discerning self-care.
🧘 Spiritual Growth
Feed your soul with practices that resonate deeply, such as contemplative walks in nature. Discern spiritual teachings that empower rather than overwhelm. This path cultivates enlightened vitality.
🎯 Decision Making
Evaluate options by their nourishing potential—does it build or deplete? Consult inner thunder for intuitive clarity before committing. Wise choices sustain future freedoms.
🙏 Daily Practice
Daily Ritual
Begin each morning by placing three nourishing items— a fruit, a written affirmation, and a small stone—on your altar. Mindfully consume or read them while visualizing roots drawing strength from earth-thunder. End by expressing gratitude for sustenance received, releasing one unneeded habit aloud.
Meditation
Sit comfortably, hands on solar plexus, imagining a mountain basin filling with golden light from bubbling thunder below. Breathe in pure vitality, exhale toxins. Feel the basin overflow with empowering energy, sustaining your entire being.
Journaling Prompts
What fed my body, mind, and spirit today? Which inputs drained me, and how can I replace them? What one nourishing choice will I make tomorrow?
🔄 Mark the Changing Lines
A cast marks some of the six lines as changing and leaves the rest still. Tick the ones yours marked, counting from the bottom line up, and this works out the hexagram they turn this one into. Each tick flips that line to its opposite — broken becomes unbroken, unbroken becomes broken — and the six lines you are left with are one of the other 63 hexagrams. It resolves as you tick: there is nothing to submit, the arithmetic runs in this page on your own device, and nothing you tick is sent anywhere.
No lines marked as changing. A reading with nothing moving in it stays put: Hexagram 27 is the whole answer and there is no second hexagram to look up.
🔗 Related Hexagrams
Opposite: Hexagram 28, as it embodies excess and collapse where 27 seeks balanced sustenance.
Companion: Hexagram 48, the Well, for deepening sources of pure nourishment together.
Evolution: Often flows into Hexagram 21, biting through obstacles with nourished resolve.
Hexagrams inside and beside this one
Computed from this hexagram's six lines, counted from the bottom. These are structural relations, not part of Legge's translation, and not readings in themselves.
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Nuclear
Hexagram 2: Kūn (The Receptive)
Formed by taking lines 2–3–4 as the lower trigram (here Earth) and lines 3–4–5 as the upper (here Earth), so the bottom and top lines drop out. Some readers treat it as the core hidden inside a situation; schools differ on how much weight it deserves.
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Inverted
Hexagram 27: Yí (Nourishment) — this hexagram itself
Formed by turning the six lines upside down, so line 6 becomes line 1. This figure reads the same either way up (one of only eight that do), so the King Wen order pairs it with its opposite, Hexagram 28, instead. How much the inversion means is read differently from school to school.
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Opposite
Hexagram 28: Dà Guò (Great Exceeding)
Formed by flipping every line: each solid line becomes broken and each broken line solid. Some readers use it to see what a situation is not; schools differ on how much weight it carries.