Gene Keys profile, key 50: 鼎 Dǐng

Key 50 is 鼎 Dǐng, fire above wood, a figure drawn like a ritual cauldron on its legs. Our three words for its bands come from the cauldron whose leg breaks and spills the prince's meal, the commentary's wood that feeds the fire to cook, and the top line's cauldron with rings of jade.

Meaning

鼎 is the bronze tripod cauldron of ancient China, used to cook offerings and the emblem of a dynasty's legitimacy. The figure looks like one: a broken line for the legs, strong lines for the belly, a broken line for the ears, a strong line for the carrying bar. Wood below feeds fire above, cooking what is in the vessel. The statement of the hexagram is great good fortune and success. Our gloss is the cauldron. The full text is on the hexagram 50 page.

In the sample profile on our system page, key 50 is the Radiance, the design Sun. Key 50 pairs with key 49, change; its opposite on the wheel is key 3.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Spilling, is the fourth line, 鼎折足, 覆公餗: the cauldron's leg breaks and the prince's meal is spilled. It is taking on more than the vessel can carry. The Gift band, Nurturing, is the commentary on the statement, 以木巽火, 亨飪也: wood is put to the fire, and so the food is cooked, raw things made into nourishment for others. The Siddhi band, Refinement, is the top line, 鼎玉鉉: the cauldron has rings of jade, great good fortune, the raw made fine enough to offer to the highest.

The three bands describe a vessel that overflows, that feeds, and that refines.

In a profile

Key 50 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 26°22′30″ Libra and 2°00′ 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 20 to 25 October. People born then have key 50 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 3, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 15 to 19 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 26°22′30″ Libra is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 1°03′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: 鼎 Dǐng, hexagram 50 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Ting sourced
Trigram images: Wind / wood below, Fire above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced
Our gloss: the cauldron: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction
Our words for the three bands: Spilling, Nurturing and Refinement, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction
Opposite on the wheel: Key 3, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced
Pair in the received order: Key 49, 革 Gé: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced
Within and upside down: Lines 2 to 5 give 43 夬 Guài; the figure turned upside down gives 49 革 Gé 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 50 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 26°22′30″ Libra to 2°00′ Scorpio (206.375° to 212° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882): Great progress and success. The text in full is on the hexagram 50 page.
Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward): Gate 50, 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 50, 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 3 its programming partner.
EsoTerrier: The vessel that transforms: it takes on more than it can hold and spills, turns raw things into food for others, and at its peak makes the raw fine enough to offer to the highest.

Claims about it

Key 50 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 50 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 50 on the zodiac, 26°22′30″ Libra to 2°00′ 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

Your Gene Keys reading, $4.99. Includes this system's raw data. Written for you by AI. Read a sample. Charts and the written text are free in every account.

Key 50, 鼎 Dǐng: the bronze vessel on its three legs

Facts