Gene Keys profile, key 34: 大壯 Dà Zhuàng

Key 34 is 大壯 Dà Zhuàng, thunder above heaven: four firm lines rising from below, the hexagram of great power. Our words for its three bands come from the ram that butts the hedge and is caught, the Image's step that does not go against propriety, and the ram lost with ease.

Meaning

大壯 means the great are vigorous: four firm lines have risen from the bottom of the figure and two yielding lines remain above them. Thunder, movement, stands over heaven, the firm: a great deal of power, moving upward. The statement of the hexagram is a single caution: firmness is what furthers. Power, in this reading, needs to be right before it is used. Our gloss is great power. The full text is on the hexagram 34 page.

In the Han calendars 大壯 is the second lunar month, when yang has passed the middle of the figure. Key 34 pairs with key 33 and has key 20 as its opposite on the wheel.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Impasse, is the top line, 羝羊觸藩, 不能退, 不能遂: the ram butts the hedge and can go neither back nor forward. It is pushing until the horns are caught and nothing moves. The Gift band, Propriety, is the Image, 君子以非禮弗履: the noble person does not take a step that is against what is fitting. Power is used only where it is right. The Siddhi band, Mildness, is the fifth line, 喪羊于易: the ram is lost with ease, and there is no regret. Great power needs no pushing.

So the bands run from pushing that jams, to power that is measured, to power that no longer needs to show. They describe a quality, not any person's power.

In a profile

Key 34 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 0°07′30″ Sagittarius and 5°45′ Sagittarius 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 November. People born then have key 34 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 20, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 17 to 22 February, it is the Radiance, where the Sun stood at the design moment.

Each of its six lines is 56′15″ wide. A position from 0°07′30″ Sagittarius is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 4°48′45″ Sagittarius 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: 大壯 Dà Zhuàng, hexagram 34 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Tâ Kwang sourced
Trigram images: Heaven below, Thunder above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
Our gloss: great power: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
Our words for the three bands: Impasse, Propriety and Mildness, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
Opposite on the wheel: Key 20, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
Pair in the received order: Key 33, 遯 Dùn: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced
Within and upside down: Lines 2 to 5 give 43 夬 Guài; the figure turned upside down gives 33 遯 Dùn sourced
Codon ring (Rudd): Rudd groups this key in his Ring of Destiny, which he ties to asparagine: his grouping and his choice of amino acid, not a finding of genetics sourced
Place on the wheel: Gate 34 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 0°07′30″ Sagittarius to 5°45′ Sagittarius (240.125° to 245.75° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882): Advantage in being firm and correct. The text in full is on the hexagram 34 page.
Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward): Gate 34, 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 34, 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 20 its programming partner.
EsoTerrier: Great power and its use: it pushes until the horns are caught and nothing moves, uses its power only where that is right, and at its peak holds great power with no need to push.

Claims about it

Key 34 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 34 belongs to the Ring of Destiny, a chemical family in the body tied to asparagine.
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 34 on the zodiac, 0°07′30″ Sagittarius to 5°45′ Sagittarius, 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 34, 大壯 Dà Zhuàng: thunder high up in the sky

Facts