Gene Keys profile, key 49: 革 Gé

Key 49 is 革 Gé, fire within the lake, the hexagram of change: the character is a hide, stripped and renewed. Our three words for its bands come from the petty people who change only their faces, the change trusted once its day has come, and the great person who changes like a tiger.

Meaning

革 is a hide, an animal skin, and so to moult, to strip away, to change. Fire and water are in the same figure, fire below the lake, each trying to put an end to the other; the two younger daughters live together but their aims are at odds. The statement of the hexagram says such a change is believed only on its own day, and then brings great success, with firmness, and regret disappears. Our gloss is the hide changed. The text is on the hexagram 49 page.

The Image turns change into the calendar: the noble person sets the reckoning of time in order and makes the seasons clear. Key 49 pairs with key 50, the cauldron; its opposite on the wheel is key 4.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Posturing, is the top line, 小人革面: petty people change their faces, the outward look altered and nothing beneath it. The Gift band, Timing, joins the statement's 巳日乃孚, trusted when its day has come, to the third line's 革言三就, change spoken of three times before it is taken up: changing when the day is right and everyone has been heard. The Siddhi band, Splendour, is the fifth line, 大人虎變: the great person changes like a tiger, the change visible in every stripe.

So the bands go from surface change, to change well timed, to change that transforms the whole. They describe a quality, not a call for anyone to change anything.

In a profile

Key 49 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 18°52′30″ Aquarius and 24°30′ Aquarius 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 8 to 12 February. People born then have key 49 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 4, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 7 to 12 May, 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″ Aquarius is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 23°33′45″ Aquarius 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: 革 Gé, hexagram 49 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Ko sourced
Trigram images: Fire below, Lake / marsh above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
Our gloss: the hide changed: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
Our words for the three bands: Posturing, Timing and Splendour, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
Opposite on the wheel: Key 4, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
Pair in the received order: Key 50, 鼎 Dǐng: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced
Within and upside down: Lines 2 to 5 give 44 姤 Gòu; the figure turned upside down gives 50 鼎 Dǐng sourced
Codon ring (Rudd): Rudd groups this key in his Ring of Whirlwind, which he ties to histidine: his grouping and his choice of amino acid, not a finding of genetics sourced
Place on the wheel: Gate 49 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 18°52′30″ Aquarius to 24°30′ Aquarius (318.875° to 324.5° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882): Believed in only after it has been accomplished; great progress and success; advantage in being firm and correct; occasion for repentance disappears. The text in full is on the hexagram 49 page.
Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward): Gate 49, in the Solar Plexus 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 49, 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 4 its programming partner.
EsoTerrier: Change that goes all the way through: it changes the face and nothing underneath, changes when the day has come and everyone has been heard, and at its peak changes so completely that it shows in every marking, like a tiger's coat.

Claims about it

Key 49 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 49 belongs to the Ring of Whirlwind, a chemical family in the body tied to histidine.
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 49 on the zodiac, 18°52′30″ Aquarius to 24°30′ Aquarius, 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 49, 革 Gé: the tiger's new coat

Facts