Key 44, 姤 Gòu: the wind that blows under the whole sky

Meaning

姤 means to meet, to come upon unexpectedly. After key 1, all strong, a single yielding line appears at the bottom: something new has entered, and the figure is about how that first contact is handled. Wind moves under the whole sky, reaching everything. The statement of the hexagram, in the language of its time, warns against taking so bold a bride; the tradition reads it as caution towards an influence that seems small but grows fast. Our gloss is encounter, meeting. The text is on the hexagram 44 page.

In the Han calendars 姤 is the fifth lunar month, the month of the summer solstice, when yin first returns. Key 44 pairs with key 43 and has key 24 as its opposite on the wheel.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Infatuation, rests on the statement's warning, 女壯, 勿用取女: the newcomer is strong, do not take her in, an image of being taken over by the first thing that comes to meet one. The Gift band, Containment, is the first line, 繫于金柅: tied to a brake of metal, the new influence held in check until it is known. The Siddhi band, Godsend, is the fifth line, 以杞包瓜, 有隕自天: a melon wrapped in willow leaves, hidden lines, and something falls from heaven.

So the key moves from being swept away, to careful holding, to receiving without grasping. It is a theme about meeting the new, not about anyone's relationships.

In a profile

Key 44 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 7°37′30″ Scorpio and 13°15′ Scorpio 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 31 October to 5 November. People born then have key 44 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 24, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 26 to 30 January, it is the Radiance, where the Sun stood at the design moment.

Each of its six lines is 56′15″ wide. A position from 7°37′30″ Scorpio is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 12°18′45″ Scorpio 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

姤 Gòu, hexagram 44 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Kâu sourced

Trigram images

Wind / wood below, Heaven above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced

Our gloss

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

Our words for the three bands

Infatuation, Containment and Godsend, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction

Opposite on the wheel

Key 24, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced

Pair in the received order

Key 43, 夬 Guài: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced

Within and upside down

Lines 2 to 5 give 1 乾 Qián; the figure turned upside down gives 43 夬 Guài sourced

Codon ring (Rudd)

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

Place on the wheel

Gate 44 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 7°37′30″ Scorpio to 13°15′ Scorpio (217.625° to 223.25° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)

The figure's single yielding line meets five strong ones, and the text, in the language of its time, warns against taking so bold a bride; we read the warning as being about any new influence that comes to meet one. The text in full is on the hexagram 44 page.

Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)

Gate 44, in the Spleen 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 44, 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 24 its programming partner.

EsoTerrier

An encounter with something new: it is taken over by the first thing that comes to meet it, holds a new influence in check until it knows what it is, and at its peak receives what falls from above when nothing is grasped.

Claims about it

• Key 44 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 44 belongs to the Ring of Illuminati, a chemical family in the body tied to glutamic acid.

  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 44 on the zodiac, 7°37′30″ Scorpio to 13°15′ Scorpio, 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 44: Encounter the I Ching text this key is read from
• Key 24: 復 Fù, return its opposite on the wheel
• Key 43: 夬 Guài, resolute breakthrough its pair in the received order
• Key 1: 乾 Qián, strength that never rests the hexagram within it, lines 2 to 5
• Human Design gate 44 the same place in the system the profile is calculated by