Hexagram 49The Revolution (The Molting)
Upper : Lake (Dui) - ☱Lower : Fire (Li) - ☲
"The revolution. It is only on the day it is accomplished that faith is placed in it. Sublime success. Perseverance is advantageous. Regret vanishes."
Fire and Water are in conflict. Fire evaporates water, water extinguishes fire. Their natures cannot coexist peacefully: one must annihilate the other to establish a new order. This is Revolution. Like the molting of a serpent, the old skin, having become too constrictive and ossified, must be shed. A true revolution is never understood until it is completed. The moment (the Kairos) must be chosen with absolute precision.
"Fire within the lake: the image of revolution. Thus the noble man brings order to the reckoning of time and clarifies the epochs."
A just revolution is not anarchy, but the transition from an obsolete old order to a new order more aligned with the cosmos.
A thunderous paradigm shift within your psyche. Your former beliefs, your old profession, or your past identity can no longer contain who you are becoming. The Ego resists, terrified by the destruction of its world. Jung calls this the death and rebirth of the Ego. Do not compromise. Embrace the destruction of Fire, for it is what will forge your new psychological structure.
This is the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking. During the Big Bang, the Universe was an undifferentiated and perfectly symmetrical plasma. As it cooled, energy underwent "revolutions" (phase transitions) where the fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear) violently separated, destroying the original symmetry to create the complex structure of matter we know today.