Key 56, 旅 Lǚ: fire passing over the mountain

Meaning

旅 is a traveller, a stranger lodging in other people's places. Fire burns on a mountain and moves on, as a traveller does: the mountain stays, the fire passes. The statement of the hexagram promises small success, and good fortune if the traveller is firm and correct. Our gloss is the traveller, lodging. The text is on the hexagram 56 page.

In the sample profile on our system page, key 56 is the Evolution, opposite the Life's Work. Key 56 pairs with key 55, fullness, the same figure turned over; its opposite on the wheel is key 60.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Pettiness, is the first line, 旅瑣瑣: the traveller busy with trifles, which brings misfortune on himself. The Gift band, Circumspection, is the Image's 明慎: clear and careful, the conduct of a guest who keeps the host's trust. The Image applies it to matters that must not be left to drag on, which we leave to the text. The Siddhi band, Rootedness, is the second line, 旅即次: the traveller comes to an inn, his goods with him, at home in himself wherever he lodges.

So the key moves from fretting away from home, to careful conduct, to a settledness that travels with one.

In a profile

Key 56 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 26°22′30″ Cancer and 2°00′ Leo 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 19 to 24 July. People born then have key 56 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 60, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 18 to 23 October, 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″ Cancer is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 1°03′45″ Leo 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

旅 Lǚ, hexagram 56 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Lü sourced

Trigram images

Mountain below, Fire above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced

Our gloss

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

Our words for the three bands

Pettiness, Circumspection and Rootedness, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction

Opposite on the wheel

Key 60, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced

Pair in the received order

Key 55, 豐 Fēng: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced

Within and upside down

Lines 2 to 5 give 28 大過 Dà Guò; the figure turned upside down gives 55 豐 Fēng sourced

Codon ring (Rudd)

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

Place on the wheel

Gate 56 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 26°22′30″ Cancer to 2°00′ Leo (116.375° to 122° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)

Some small attainment and progress; if the traveller is firm and correct there will be good fortune. The text in full is on the hexagram 56 page.

Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)

Gate 56, in the Throat 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 56, 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 60 its programming partner.

EsoTerrier

Being a stranger: it fusses over trifles away from home, is careful and clear, a guest who keeps the host's trust, and at its peak is rooted in itself, so that any place can be home.

Claims about it

• Key 56 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 56 belongs to the Ring of Trials, a chemical family in the body tied to the stop codons.

  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 56 on the zodiac, 26°22′30″ Cancer to 2°00′ Leo, 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 56: The Traveller the I Ching text this key is read from
• Key 60: 節 Jié, measure, the joint in the bamboo its opposite on the wheel
• Key 55: 豐 Fēng, fullness, the noon its pair in the received order
• Key 28: 大過 Dà Guò, great excess the hexagram within it, lines 2 to 5
• Human Design gate 56 the same place in the system the profile is calculated by