Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm

The figure

Earth below, the mother, receptive and still. Thunder above, the eldest son, the arousing, movement itself. One solid line in the fourth place with five broken lines around it. Thunder breaking out of the ground in early spring and rolling across the open country.

The picture is release. Something that was held under the earth all winter comes up with a crack and everything that was asleep sits up. The tradition tied this hexagram to music and ceremony, drums and dancing, the old kings bringing people together with a beat. I think that is exactly right. One strong line gets the other five moving the way one drummer gets a whole hall on its feet.

Enthusiasm is paired with Hexagram 15, Modesty, which is the same six lines turned over so the one solid line sits inside the earth and keeps still.

When it comes up in a reading

When I cast Enthusiasm I read it as a green light with a condition attached. The energy is there, the people will follow, the moment is ready to move. The condition is the direction. Thunder that rolls out across the land with a purpose brings the rain. Thunder with no purpose is just noise, and people get tired of noise.

The guidance is to go with the natural movement of the thing. The book is fond of the picture of water following the shape of the ground. If you are leading, lead the way the group already wants to go and give it a beat to march to. If you are following, check that the beat is one you believe in before you start marching. Enthusiasm is contagious and that is its gift and its danger in the one package.

I also take it as permission to feel it. People in my part of the world are suspicious of excitement. We wait for the catch. Enthusiasm says the catch is only there if you give your fire to something that does not deserve it, and that the feeling itself, when it is pointed at a worthy thing, is one of the great engines of a life.

If the question was about a project, read it as the moment to gather people and get it moving, with your own belief as the drum. If it was about a relationship, it says there is real energy between you and the question is what you build with it. If it was about a cause or a crowd, be careful. Ask who is holding the drumsticks and where they are taking everyone.

As a birth hexagram

If this is your birth hexagram, or if it keeps coming back to you, you light rooms up. You get excited about ideas and projects and people and the excitement is real, which is why it spreads. There is nothing performed about it. Teams come alive when you lead them. Parties start when you arrive, and I say that as an observation, because you already know it.

You move people to action. When you are behind something, other people want in. Your conviction switches on theirs. Many people with this hexagram have music in them, or rhythm, or a sense that life has a beat and they can hear it. If that is you, trust it.

Your gift is getting the group going. Things that needed a collective push got one because you were the spark. You also tend to stay alive, across decades, in a way that more easily drained people envy. Your vitality shows others what is possible as a settled way of being, year after year.

The shadow is giving your fire to the wrong thing. Enthusiasm that does not stop to think can be captured by a cause, a leader or a shopping habit that does not deserve it, and the fire burns just as brightly either way. Discernment is the whole job for you. The other shadow is needing the outside to light you. Learning to find the beat inside, on a quiet Tuesday with nothing on, is where this hexagram matures.

At maturity you have given your enthusiasm to things that earned it and the results are everywhere. Movements served, teams built, people got moving who would otherwise have stayed on the couch. The world around you is measurably more awake because you were in it.

If a line moves

When one of the six lines is moving, I read where it sits before I read anything else. The two lower lines are the beginning of the matter, the first stirring of excitement and the question of whether it is loud talk or real movement. The two middle lines are the heart of it, where the one solid line gathers everyone and the energy is at its height and most easily misdirected. The two upper lines are the end of it, where the thunder has passed over, and where the warning is about going too far and staying drunk on the feeling after the reason for it has gone. The moving line changes to its opposite and gives a second hexagram, where the matter is heading. The How to Cast a Hexagram page walks through it with a worked example.

Across the traditions

The Eight Trigrams page gives you Thunder and Earth on their own. The Chinese Astrology section has the yin and yang this whole book is built on. In the tarot I set Enthusiasm beside the Knight of Wands, horse rearing, wand up, already halfway out of the card. That pairing is my own and I hold it lightly.

What are you excited about right now, and does it deserve you?

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.