Key 47, 困 Kùn: the lake with its water drained away

Meaning

困 is a tree inside an enclosure: to be hemmed in, exhausted, at a loss. The water trigram has sunk beneath the lake, so the lake above is empty; the strong lines are each surrounded by yielding ones. The statement of the hexagram still speaks of success for the firm and correct great person, and adds a hard truth of such times: words are not believed. Our gloss is confinement, hemmed in. The text is on the hexagram 47 page.

Key 47 pairs with key 48, the well, the same lines turned over; its opposite on the wheel is key 22.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Complaining, is the statement's 有言不信: one speaks and is not believed. It is talking more the less one is heard. The Gift band, Tenacity, is the Image, 澤无水, 君子以致命遂志: a lake with no water, and the noble person stakes everything on carrying out their aim. The Siddhi band, Disentanglement, is the top line, 困于葛藟, 征吉: hemmed in by creeping vines, yet setting out brings good fortune. The last tangle is shaken off.

The three bands describe a narrow place met by protest, by perseverance and by release.

In a profile

Key 47 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 17°00′ Virgo and 22°37′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 10 to 15 September. People born then have key 47 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 22, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 7 to 12 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 17°00′ Virgo is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 21°41′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

困 Kùn, hexagram 47 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Khwăn sourced

Trigram images

Water below, Lake / marsh above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced

Our gloss

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

Our words for the three bands

Complaining, Tenacity and Disentanglement, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction

Opposite on the wheel

Key 22, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced

Pair in the received order

Key 48, 井 Jǐng: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced

Within and upside down

Lines 2 to 5 give 37 家人 Jiā Rén; the figure turned upside down gives 48 井 Jǐng 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 47 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 17°00′ Virgo to 22°37′30″ Virgo (167° to 172.625° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)

There may yet be progress and success; for the firm and correct great man there will be good fortune and no error; if he speaks, he will not be believed. The text in full is on the hexagram 47 page.

Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)

Gate 47, 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 47, 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 22 its programming partner.

EsoTerrier

Being hemmed in: it talks more the less it is heard, holds to its aim when the lake has run dry, and at its peak shakes off the last creeper and finds the way open.

Claims about it

• Key 47 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 47 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 47 on the zodiac, 17°00′ Virgo to 22°37′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 47: Confinement the I Ching text this key is read from
• Key 22: 賁 Bì, adornment, beauty of form its opposite on the wheel
• Key 48: 井 Jǐng, the well its pair in the received order
• Key 37: 家人 Jiā Rén, the household, its roles the hexagram within it, lines 2 to 5
• Human Design gate 47 the same place in the system the profile is calculated by