Gene Keys profile, key 23: 剝 Bō

Key 23 is 剝 Bō, a mountain resting on the earth with only one strong line left at the top: the hexagram of stripping away. Our words for its three bands come from the bed worn away at its legs, the Image's strengthening of what lies below, and the large fruit left uneaten.

Meaning

剝 means to peel, to strip away. Five yielding lines have risen from the bottom and only one strong line remains at the top, like a roof on a house whose walls have gone. The mountain above rests on the earth below, worn down towards the plain. The statement of the hexagram advises against going anywhere: this is a time for staying put. Our gloss is stripping away. The text is on the hexagram 23 page.

The Han calendars make 剝 the ninth lunar month, late autumn, when yang is all but gone. It pairs with key 24, where the strong line returns at the bottom; within it lies key 2, all yielding.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Undermining, is the first line, 剝床以足: the bed is split at its legs, the base worn away from beneath. The Gift band, Groundwork, is the Image, 上以厚下安宅: those above strengthen those below and so keep their dwelling secure. When the top is being stripped, it is the base that is worth tending. The Siddhi band, Seed, is the top line, 碩果不食: a large fruit not eaten, the one seed left that can start everything again.

The three bands describe loss at three levels: wearing away the ground, shoring it up, and keeping the seed.

In a profile

Key 23 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 18°52′30″ Taurus and 24°30′ Taurus 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 9 to 15 May. People born then have key 23 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 43, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 9 to 15 August, it is the Radiance, where the Sun stood at the design moment.

Each of its six lines is 56′15″ wide. A position from 18°52′30″ Taurus is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 23°33′45″ Taurus 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: 剝 Bō, hexagram 23 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Po sourced
Trigram images: Earth below, Mountain above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
Our gloss: stripping away: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
Our words for the three bands: Undermining, Groundwork and Seed, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
Opposite on the wheel: Key 43, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
Pair in the received order: Key 24, 復 Fù: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced
Within and upside down: Lines 2 to 5 give 2 坤 Kūn; the figure turned upside down gives 24 復 Fù sourced
Codon ring (Rudd): Rudd groups this key in his Ring of Life and Death, which he ties to leucine: his grouping and his choice of amino acid, not a finding of genetics sourced
Place on the wheel: Gate 23 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 18°52′30″ Taurus to 24°30′ Taurus (48.875° to 54.5° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882): It will not be advantageous to make a movement in any direction. The text in full is on the hexagram 23 page.
Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward): Gate 23, in the Throat 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 23, 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 43 its programming partner.
EsoTerrier: Erosion and what survives it: it wears away the base it stands on, strengthens the foundation while the top is stripped, and at its peak is the single seed left that starts everything again.

Claims about it

Key 23 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 23 belongs to the Ring of Life and Death, a chemical family in the body tied to leucine.
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 23 on the zodiac, 18°52′30″ Taurus to 24°30′ Taurus, 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 23, 剝 Bō: the mountain worn down to the plain

Facts