Gene Keys profile, key 21: 噬嗑 Shì Kè

Key 21 is 噬嗑 Shì Kè, thunder under fire: an open mouth with something lodged between its jaws, the hexagram of biting through. Our three words for its bands come from the line that bites into old dried meat, the name of the hexagram, and the thunder and lightning of its Image.

Meaning

噬嗑 means to bite and bring together: the jaws close on what is between them so that they can meet. The figure looks like an open mouth, strong lines at top and bottom, with a single strong line in the fourth place lodged between them like something to be bitten through. Thunder below and lightning above give force and clarity together. Our gloss is closing the jaws on what blocks. The text is on the hexagram 21 page.

The statement and the Image speak of old punishments and laws, which we leave to the text; we read the hexagram as removing an obstacle between people, and it describes nothing about any real dispute. Key 21 pairs with key 22, the same figure turned over.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Rancour, is the third line, 噬臘肉遇毒: biting into dried meat and meeting something bad in it. It is the grievance chewed over and never got through. The Gift band, Decisiveness, is the hexagram's name itself, 噬嗑: biting through so that the jaws meet, cleanly and once. The Siddhi band, Candour, is the Image, 雷電: thunder and lightning together, the flash that shows everything plainly, what was hidden between people brought into the open.

The bands run from resentment, through decision, to clarity.

In a profile

Key 21 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 9°30′ Aries and 15°07′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 30 March to 4 April. People born then have key 21 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 48, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 29 June to 4 July, it is the Radiance, where the Sun stood at the design moment.

Each of its six lines is 56′15″ wide. A position from 9°30′ Aries is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 14°11′15″ 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: 噬嗑 Shì Kè, hexagram 21 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Shih Ho sourced
Trigram images: Thunder below, Fire above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
Our gloss: closing the jaws on what blocks: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
Our words for the three bands: Rancour, Decisiveness and Candour, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
Opposite on the wheel: Key 48, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
Pair in the received order: Key 22, 賁 Bì: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced
Within and upside down: Lines 2 to 5 give 39 蹇 Jiǎn; the figure turned upside down gives 22 賁 Bì 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 21 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 9°30′ Aries to 15°07′30″ Aries (9.5° to 15.125° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882): Success; the text goes on to the use of restraints, the old punishments, which we leave to it. The text in full is on the hexagram 21 page.
Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward): Gate 21, in the Heart 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 21, 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 48 its programming partner.
EsoTerrier: Biting through what blocks: it chews on a grievance without ever getting through it, bites once and cleanly through what stands between, and at its peak brings what was hidden between people into plain light.

Claims about it

Key 21 is a code held in the genes, and contemplating it changes how they are expressed.
unverified

What 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.
Key 21 belongs to the Ring of Humanity, a chemical family in the body tied to arginine.
unverified

What 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.
The place of key 21 on the zodiac, 9°30′ Aries to 15°07′30″ Aries, is an old I Ching teaching.
false

What 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.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

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Key 21, 噬嗑 Shì Kè: jaws that close on what lies between them

Facts