Gene Keys profile, key 4: 蒙 Méng

Key 4 is 蒙 Méng, water under a mountain, the hexagram of youthful folly and of teaching. Our words for its bands come from its three best-known sayings: the question asked too often, the pupil held kindly, and the spring that rises at the mountain's foot.

Meaning

蒙 is a covering plant, and by extension the covered, untaught mind. The hexagram sets water, which flows, under a mountain, which stops it, so the water must find its way out; the Image sees a spring breaking out at the mountain's foot. The Judgment states the teacher's rule: it is not I who seek the young fool, the young fool seeks me; at the first asking I answer, but asked a second and third time, the question is a nuisance and I give no answer. Our gloss is the untaught, covered mind. The text is on the hexagram 4 page.

Key 4 follows key 3 in the received order and is its figure turned over: after the hard beginning comes the need to learn.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Pestering, is the Judgment's 再三瀆, 瀆則不告: asking twice and three times is a nuisance, and a nuisance gets no answer. It is the restless asking that never stops to hear the reply. The Gift band, Apprenticeship, is the second line, 包蒙: bearing with the untaught kindly, the teacher who takes the learner in. We read it from the learner's side too, as learning from one who knows and doing as they show. The Siddhi band, Wellspring, is the Image itself, 山下出泉: a spring issuing from the foot of the mountain, knowing that rises clear and on its own.

The three bands draw one line from a mind that will not listen to a mind that no longer needs to be told.

In a profile

Key 4 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 18°52′30″ Leo and 24°30′ Leo 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 12 to 17 August. People born then have key 4 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 49, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 9 to 14 November, 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″ Leo is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 23°33′45″ Leo 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: 蒙 Méng, hexagram 4 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Măng sourced
Trigram images: Water below, Mountain above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
Our gloss: the untaught, covered mind: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
Our words for the three bands: Pestering, Apprenticeship and Wellspring, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
Opposite on the wheel: Key 49, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
Pair in the received order: Key 3, 屯 Zhūn: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced
Within and upside down: Lines 2 to 5 give 24 復 Fù; the figure turned upside down gives 3 屯 Zhūn sourced
Codon ring (Rudd): Rudd groups this key in his Ring of Union, which he ties to valine: his grouping and his choice of amino acid, not a finding of genetics sourced
Place on the wheel: Gate 4 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 18°52′30″ Leo to 24°30′ Leo (138.875° to 144.5° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882): Progress and success; the teacher does not seek the pupil, the pupil seeks the teacher, and a question asked three times is not answered. The text in full is on the hexagram 4 page.
Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward): Gate 4, 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 4, 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 49 its programming partner.
EsoTerrier: The mind that does not yet know: it learns by asking once and listening, wears out its teacher by asking again and again, and at its peak knows the way a spring flows, clear and from within.

Claims about it

Key 4 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 4 belongs to the Ring of Union, a chemical family in the body tied to valine.
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 4 on the zodiac, 18°52′30″ Leo to 24°30′ Leo, 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 4, 蒙 Méng: the spring at the foot of the mountain

Facts