Shì Kē, hexagram 21

Biting through

  Make clear decisions about what you accept or not. Stick to them, both in regard to yourself and towards others.
  Base them on clear facts – but also use your intuition. Life is more than just rational facts, a big part is intangible, and your life’s value and health depends very much on your own feelings. When something feels wrong, then don’t accept it, even when you cannot explain your point of view.
  Hex. 21 belongs together with 22, the one about accepting things, people and life the way they are and enjoying them as beauty. Life has to be clean to be beautiful, and it’s beauty tells about its health.

Hex.21

  SHÌ. The character (biting) is composed of bamboo (1), shaman (3) and mouth (4). Shaman + bamboo is oracle-consulting with yarrow stalks. Shaman is work (2) + two people. But an older character does not show either: It looks like a sorcerers symbol (8). According to W-HY it is derived from the character five (9).
  SHÌ: to bite, to gnaw, loan for reach, come to.
  KÈ, this character means 'till the teeth meet, or clasp them'. And also: speak excessively, to crack. Together with shi (bite) it is biting through. It is composed of mouth (4) dish (6) and a lid or a 'closer' (10). So 7 is a dish with lid. The lid (10) was originally a drawing of a man with a ball between his legs and might have meant castrate: remove, leave, depart, close.
  KÈ: to shut,loquacious, sound of voices, crack something between the teeth. Pronounced hia: laugh.

The trigrams: Thunder and Fire.
Thunder and lightning: Biting through
The ancient kings made the penalties clear to enforce the law.

More about hexagrams 21 and 22