Key 6, 訟 Sòng: the quarrel settled before it starts

Meaning

訟 is a dispute put into words, an argument before someone who will hear it. The figure has heaven rising above water that sinks, so the two trigrams draw further apart: the tradition reads it as two parties who see no common ground. The Judgment allows that one may be in the right and still be blocked, and says that caution brings good fortune, pushing on to the end brings misfortune, and it is good to see the great person. Our gloss is dispute, contention. For the text see the hexagram 6 page.

We read the hexagram as a description of how a quarrel is handled, and nothing about any real dispute or its outcome. It pairs with key 5, its figure turned over.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Obstinacy, is the Judgment's 終凶: carried through to the end, the contest turns out badly. It is the insistence on winning that costs more than the matter was worth. The Gift band, Forethought, is the Image, 君子以作事謀始: in beginning any affair, the noble person takes counsel at the start, so that what could be fought over later is settled first. The Siddhi band, Impartiality, comes from the fifth line, 訟元吉, which the text counts as greatly fortunate, and the Judgment's 利見大人: the presence of someone who can see both sides with no stake in either winning.

So the key runs from the urge to prevail, through foresight, to fairness. It is a way to look at quarrels, never advice on one.

In a profile

Key 6 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 22°37′30″ Virgo and 28°15′ 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 15 to 20 September. People born then have key 6 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 36, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 13 to 17 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 22°37′30″ Virgo is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 27°18′45″ 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

訟 Sòng, hexagram 6 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Sung sourced

Trigram images

Water below, Heaven above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced

Our gloss

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

Our words for the three bands

Obstinacy, Forethought and Impartiality, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction

Opposite on the wheel

Key 36, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced

Pair in the received order

Key 5, 需 Xū: 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 5 需 Xū 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 6 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 22°37′30″ Virgo to 28°15′ Virgo (172.625° to 178.25° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)

Sincerity meets obstruction; caution brings good fortune, pushing the contest to the end brings evil; see the great man, do not cross the great stream. The text in full is on the hexagram 6 page.

Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)

Gate 6, 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 6, 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 36 its programming partner.

EsoTerrier

Contention and how it is held: it hardens into a fight carried to the bitter end, is defused by settling things at the start, and at its peak sees both sides whole with no need to win.

Claims about it

• Key 6 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 6 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 6 on the zodiac, 22°37′30″ Virgo to 28°15′ 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 6: Dispute the I Ching text this key is read from
• Key 36: 明夷 Míng Yí, brightness wounded its opposite on the wheel
• Key 5: 需 Xū, waiting, provisioning 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 6 the same place in the system the profile is calculated by