Key 40, 解 Xiè: the storm that breaks and clears the air

Meaning

解 means to untie, to loosen, to set free. The figure is the reverse of key 39: thunder, movement, has got out above the water of danger, and the tension breaks in a storm. The statement of the hexagram again favours the south-west, and adds that when nothing more needs doing a return brings good fortune, and when something does, doing it early brings good fortune. Our gloss is release, the knot untied. For the text see the hexagram 40 page.

Key 40 pairs with key 39, the same figure turned over, and has key 37 as its opposite on the wheel.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Encumbrance, is the third line, 負且乘, 致寇至: carrying a burden on one's back while riding in a carriage, which invites robbers. It is holding on to the load after it has been lifted. The Gift band, Leniency, is the Image, 君子以赦過宥罪: thunder and rain, and the noble person excuses mistakes and deals gently with wrongs, so that everyone can move again. The Siddhi band, Thaw, is the Image's own pairing, 雷雨作解: thunder and rain set things free, as spring storms loosen frozen ground.

The bands describe release at three degrees: refused, granted, and complete.

In a profile

Key 40 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 5°45′ Virgo and 11°22′30″ Virgo 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 29 August to 3 September. People born then have key 40 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 37, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 26 November to 1 December, it is the Radiance, where the Sun stood at the design moment.

Each of its six lines is 56′15″ wide. A position from 5°45′ Virgo is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 10°26′15″ Virgo 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

解 Xiè, hexagram 40 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Kieh sourced

Trigram images

Water below, Thunder above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced

Our gloss

release, the knot untied: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction

Our words for the three bands

Encumbrance, Leniency and Thaw, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction

Opposite on the wheel

Key 37, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced

Pair in the received order

Key 39, 蹇 Jiǎn: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced

Within and upside down

Lines 2 to 5 give 63 既濟 Jì Jì; the figure turned upside down gives 39 蹇 Jiǎn sourced

Codon ring (Rudd)

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

Place on the wheel

Gate 40 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 5°45′ Virgo to 11°22′30″ Virgo (155.75° to 161.375° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)

Advantage in the south-west; if nothing further is needed, good fortune in returning; if something is needed, good fortune in doing it early. The text in full is on the hexagram 40 page.

Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)

Gate 40, in the Heart 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 40, 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 37 its programming partner.

EsoTerrier

Release after tension: it keeps hold of the load after it has been lifted, lets mistakes go so that everyone can move again, and at its peak is everything loosening at once, like ice in spring rain.

Claims about it

• Key 40 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 40 belongs to the Ring of Alchemy, a chemical family in the body tied to glycine.

  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 40 on the zodiac, 5°45′ Virgo to 11°22′30″ Virgo, 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 40: Release the I Ching text this key is read from
• Key 37: 家人 Jiā Rén, the household, its roles its opposite on the wheel
• Key 39: 蹇 Jiǎn, obstruction, limping its pair in the received order
• Key 63: 既濟 Jì Jì, already across the hexagram within it, lines 2 to 5
• Human Design gate 40 the same place in the system the profile is calculated by