Gene Keys profile, key 24: 復 Fù

Key 24 is 復 Fù, thunder under the earth, one strong line returning at the bottom of the figure: the hexagram of return. Our three words for its bands come from the line that misses the way back, the line that turns back before going far, and the seven days of its statement.

Meaning

復 means to return, to come back. After the stripping of key 23, a single strong line comes back at the bottom of the figure under five yielding ones: thunder stirring under the earth, the first movement after stillness. The statement of the hexagram speaks of free coming and going, friends who arrive without blame, and a way that returns on itself, coming back on the seventh day. Our gloss is return. For the text see the hexagram 24 page.

In the Han calendars 復 is the eleventh month, the month of the winter solstice, when the light begins to grow again; the Image has the old kings close the passes on that day and rest. Key 24 pairs with key 23 and has key 44 as its opposite.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Waywardness, is the top line, 迷復凶: losing the way back, which the text calls misfortune. It is wandering on when the road home has been missed. The Gift band, Correction, is the first line, 不遠復: returning from no great distance, before the wrong road goes far, with nothing to regret. The Siddhi band, Homecoming, is the statement, 反復其道, 七日來復: going out and coming back along the same way, return on the seventh day, arriving where one began and recognising it.

The bands describe one movement, the turn homeward, at three degrees of timing.

In a profile

Key 24 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 7°37′30″ Taurus and 13°15′ 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 28 April to 3 May. People born then have key 24 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 44, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 29 July to 3 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 7°37′30″ Taurus is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 12°18′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: 復 Fù, hexagram 24 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Fû sourced
Trigram images: Thunder below, Earth above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
Our gloss: return: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
Our words for the three bands: Waywardness, Correction and Homecoming, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
Opposite on the wheel: Key 44, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
Pair in the received order: Key 23, 剝 Bō: 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 23 剝 Bō 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 24 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 7°37′30″ Taurus to 13°15′ Taurus (37.625° to 43.25° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882): Free course and progress; friends come without error; the return takes seven days; advantage in any movement. The text in full is on the hexagram 24 page.
Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward): Gate 24, 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 24, 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 44 its programming partner.
EsoTerrier: Turning back: it misses the way home and wanders on, turns back early before the wrong road goes far, and at its peak arrives where it began and knows it.

Claims about it

Key 24 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 24 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 24 on the zodiac, 7°37′30″ Taurus to 13°15′ 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 24, 復 Fù: the light that comes back beneath the earth

Facts