Meaning
頤 is the jaw, and so feeding and being fed. The figure looks like a mouth: a strong line at the bottom and the top, like two jaws, with four yielding lines between them. Thunder moves below while the mountain stays still above, as the lower jaw moves under the upper. The statement of the hexagram says firmness brings good fortune, and asks us to look at what is nourished and at how one seeks food for oneself. Our gloss is nourishment, the jaws. The text is on the hexagram 27 page.
We read nourishment broadly, as what anyone takes in and gives out, and say nothing here about diet or health. Key 27 and key 28 are pair and opposite at once.
The three bands
The Shadow band, Envy, is the first line, 舍爾靈龜, 觀我朵頤: you let your sacred tortoise go and look at me with hanging jaw. It is watching another's bowl instead of tending one's own. The Gift band, Moderation, is the Image, 君子以慎言語, 節飲食: the noble person is careful in speech and temperate in eating and drinking, mindful of what goes out of the mouth and what goes in. The Siddhi band, Provision, is the top line, 由頤: the source of nourishment, the one others are fed from, and good fortune.
So the key runs from comparing, to measure, to being a source.
In a profile
Key 27 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 2°00′ Taurus and 7°37′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 22 to 27 April. People born then have key 27 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 28, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 23 to 28 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 2°00′ Taurus is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 6°41′15″ 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
- 頤 Yí, hexagram 27 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Î sourced
- Trigram images
- Thunder below, Mountain above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
- Our gloss
- nourishment, the jaws: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
- Our words for the three bands
- Envy, Moderation and Provision, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
- Opposite on the wheel
- Key 28, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
- Pair in the received order
- Key 28, 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 2 坤 Kūn; turned upside down the figure is unchanged 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 27 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 2°00′ Taurus to 7°37′30″ Taurus (32° to 37.625° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)
- With firm correctness there will be good fortune; look at what is nourished and at how one seeks nourishment for oneself. The text in full is on the hexagram 27 page.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)
- Gate 27, in the Sacral 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 27, 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 28 its programming partner.
- EsoTerrier
- Nourishment given and taken: it watches another's bowl instead of tending its own, takes care over what goes in and what comes out, and at its peak becomes the source others are fed from.
Claims about it
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Key 27 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 27 belongs to the Ring of Life and Death, a chemical family in the body tied to leucine.
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 27 on the zodiac, 2°00′ Taurus to 7°37′30″ Taurus, 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.
