Meaning
隨 means to follow, to go along with. The figure puts thunder, the eldest son and the trigram of movement, beneath the lake, the youngest daughter and the trigram of gladness: the strong gives way to the yielding and is followed in turn. The statement of the hexagram promises great success, with advantage in being firm and correct, and so no error. Our gloss is following. The text, with Legge's translation, is on the hexagram 17 page.
The Image draws a quiet lesson from thunder resting in the marsh: at nightfall the noble person goes indoors to rest. Following includes knowing when to stop. Key 17 and key 18 are pair and opposite at once, the same lines turned over and every line reversed.
The three bands
The Shadow band, Clinging, is the second line, 係小子, 失丈夫: holding on to the little boy, one loses the strong man. It is attachment to the lesser thing at the cost of the greater. The Gift band, Adaptability, is the first line, 官有渝: the standard changes, and going out of the door to mix with others brings success. It is changing course when the moment changes. The Siddhi band, Fidelity, is the top line, 拘係之, 乃從維之: firmly bound, and then bound again, held by a tie that is followed willingly.
Read together, the three describe loyalty at three depths: to the wrong thing, to the moment, and to a bond given freely. They describe a quality, not anyone's attachments.
In a profile
Key 17 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 3°52′30″ Aries and 9°30′ Aries at birth or at the design moment, and so it can fill any of the thirteen rows or the three further tags.
The Sun passes through it each year from about 25 to 29 March. People born then have key 17 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 18, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 23 to 28 June, it is the Radiance, where the Sun stood at the design moment.
Each of its six lines is 56′15″ wide. A position from 3°52′30″ Aries is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 8°33′45″ Aries is in line 6, Overview. Every key's lines take the same six themes of ours, and the line of a fast body like the Moon depends on the birth time to the hour.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Hexagram and number
- 隨 Suí, hexagram 17 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Sui sourced
- Trigram images
- Thunder below, Lake / marsh above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
- Our gloss
- following: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
- Our words for the three bands
- Clinging, Adaptability and Fidelity, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
- Opposite on the wheel
- Key 18, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
- Pair in the received order
- Key 18, which here is also the opposite: the received order pairs the two by reversing every line sourced
- Within and upside down
- Lines 2 to 5 give 53 漸 Jiàn; the figure turned upside down gives 18 蠱 Gǔ sourced
- Codon ring (Rudd)
- Rudd groups this key in his Ring of Humanity, which he ties to arginine: his grouping and his choice of amino acid, not a finding of genetics sourced
- Place on the wheel
- Gate 17 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 3°52′30″ Aries to 9°30′ Aries (3.875° to 9.5° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)
- Great progress and success; advantage in being firm and correct; then no error. The text in full is on the hexagram 17 page.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)
- Gate 17, in the Ajna centre. The parent system gives the gate its own name and reading, which are Jovian Archive's and which we do not give here.
- Richard Rudd, The Gene Keys (2009)
- Key 17, read at three bands he calls the Shadow, the Gift and the Siddhi, each with a word of his own, under a chapter title of his own; we reproduce neither. He names key 18 its programming partner.
- EsoTerrier
- Following and being followed: it clings to the lesser thing and loses the greater, changes course when the moment changes, and at its peak keeps a bond that holds because it is freely given.
Claims about it
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Key 17 is a code held in the genes, and contemplating it changes how they are expressed.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: The central metaphor of Rudd's system, given by its author, not a finding. The profile is the positions of thirteen bodies at two moments, read on a 64-part wheel; no gene, codon or measurement of the body enters it.
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Key 17 belongs to the Ring of Humanity, a chemical family in the body tied to arginine.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: Rudd's grouping. His ring sizes follow the real number of codons per amino acid in the genetic code, but which hexagram goes with which codon is his own choice, and nothing in genetics links a hexagram to an amino acid.
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The place of key 17 on the zodiac, 3°52′30″ Aries to 9°30′ Aries, is an old I Ching teaching.
falseWhat the record shows: The wheel is Ra Uru Hu's, fixed between 1987 and 1989 by turning Shao Yong's 11th-century circle of the hexagrams so that hexagram 41 begins at 2° Aquarius. No Chinese source we know ties the hexagrams to degrees of the zodiac.
