Gene Keys profile, key 48: 井 Jǐng

Key 48 is 井 Jǐng, wood beneath water, the hexagram of the well: a town may be moved, the well cannot. Our three words for its bands come from the first line's muddy well that no one drinks from, the fourth line's lining of the well, and the top line's well that is left uncovered for all.

Meaning

井 is a well, the character itself a drawing of the frame round a well-head. Wood below water is the bucket going down and bringing water up. The statement of the hexagram is about permanence: the town may be moved but not its well; it neither loses nor gains, and people come and go and draw from it. If the rope does not reach or the bucket breaks, there is misfortune. Our gloss is the well. The text is on the hexagram 48 page.

The Image adds the social side: the noble person encourages the people and urges them to help one another. Key 48 pairs with key 47, confinement; its opposite on the wheel is key 21.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Muddiness, is the first line, 井泥不食: the well is muddy, no one drinks. It is a source left to silt up. The Gift band, Upkeep, is the fourth line, 井甃: the well is being lined with stone, kept in repair so that it can be drawn from. The Siddhi band, Inexhaustibility, is the top line, 井收勿幕: the water is drawn and the well is not covered, open to everyone and never used up.

So the key runs from a neglected source to a tended one to one that serves without end.

In a profile

Key 48 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 9°30′ Libra and 15°07′30″ Libra 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 3 to 8 October. People born then have key 48 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 21, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 29 December to 3 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 9°30′ Libra is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 14°11′15″ Libra 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: 井 Jǐng, hexagram 48 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Zing sourced
Trigram images: Wind / wood below, Water above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
Our gloss: the well: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
Our words for the three bands: Muddiness, Upkeep and Inexhaustibility, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
Opposite on the wheel: Key 21, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
Pair in the received order: Key 47, 困 Kùn: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced
Within and upside down: Lines 2 to 5 give 38 睽 Kuí; the figure turned upside down gives 47 困 Kùn sourced
Codon ring (Rudd): Rudd groups this key in his Ring of Matter, which he ties to alanine: his grouping and his choice of amino acid, not a finding of genetics sourced
Place on the wheel: Gate 48 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 9°30′ Libra to 15°07′30″ Libra (189.5° to 195.125° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882): A town may be moved but not its well; the well neither loses nor gains; people come and go and draw from it; if the rope is too short or the bucket breaks, there is evil. The text in full is on the hexagram 48 page.
Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward): Gate 48, 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 48, 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 21 its programming partner.
EsoTerrier: A source others draw from: it lets the source silt up, keeps it clean so others can draw from it, and at its peak is a source open to all and never used up.

Claims about it

Key 48 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 48 belongs to the Ring of Matter, a chemical family in the body tied to alanine.
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 48 on the zodiac, 9°30′ Libra to 15°07′30″ Libra, 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 48, 井 Jǐng: the well that stays while the town moves

Facts