Key 36, 明夷 Míng Yí: the sun gone down into the earth

Meaning

明夷 joins brightness, 明, with 夷, to wound or to lower: the light hurt, or the light brought down. The figure is the reverse of key 35, fire gone under the earth, the sun after it has set. The statement of the hexagram is short: in difficulty, it is good to be firm. Our gloss is brightness wounded. The text is on the hexagram 36 page.

The fifth line names Prince Ji of Shang, who the tradition says hid his wisdom under feigned madness to survive a cruel ruler. The later commentaries read the whole hexagram as a time when the wise keep their light inward. Key 36 pairs with key 35 and has key 6 as its opposite.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Despondency, is the first line, 明夷于飛, 垂其翼: the light wounded in flight, drooping its wings. It is giving up when the light is low. The Gift band, Discretion, is the Image, 君子以蒞眾, 用晦而明: the noble person goes among people with the light veiled, and still sees clearly. The Siddhi band, Steadfastness, joins the Judgment's 利艱貞, firmness in hardship, to the fifth line's Prince Ji: a light that goes on burning where it cannot be seen.

The bands are three ways of carrying light through a dark time: letting it fall, guarding it, keeping it.

In a profile

Key 36 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 22°37′30″ Pisces and 28°15′ Pisces 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 13 to 18 March. People born then have key 36 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 6, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 12 to 17 June, it is the Radiance, where the Sun stood at the design moment.

Each of its six lines is 56′15″ wide. A position from 22°37′30″ Pisces is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 27°18′45″ Pisces 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

明夷 Míng Yí, hexagram 36 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Ming Î sourced

Trigram images

Fire below, Earth above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced

Our gloss

brightness wounded: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction

Our words for the three bands

Despondency, Discretion and Steadfastness, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction

Opposite on the wheel

Key 6, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced

Pair in the received order

Key 35, 晉 Jìn: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced

Within and upside down

Lines 2 to 5 give 40 解 Xiè; the figure turned upside down gives 35 晉 Jìn sourced

Codon ring (Rudd)

Rudd groups this key in his Ring of Divinity, which he ties to proline: his grouping and his choice of amino acid, not a finding of genetics sourced

Place on the wheel

Gate 36 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 22°37′30″ Pisces to 28°15′ Pisces (352.625° to 358.25° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)

Advantage in realising the difficulty of the position and maintaining firm correctness. The text in full is on the hexagram 36 page.

Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)

Gate 36, in the Solar Plexus 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 36, 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 6 its programming partner.

EsoTerrier

Light in a dark time: it lets its wings droop when the light is low, keeps its light hidden until it is safe to show, and at its peak is a light that goes on burning in the dark.

Claims about it

• Key 36 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 36 belongs to the Ring of Divinity, a chemical family in the body tied to proline.

  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 36 on the zodiac, 22°37′30″ Pisces to 28°15′ Pisces, 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

• Hexagram 36: Brightness Wounded the I Ching text this key is read from
• Key 6: 訟 Sòng, dispute, contention its opposite on the wheel
• Key 35: 晉 Jìn, advance, the sun rising its pair in the received order
• Key 40: 解 Xiè, release, the knot untied the hexagram within it, lines 2 to 5
• Human Design gate 36 the same place in the system the profile is calculated by