Key 60, 節 Jié: the joints of the bamboo

Meaning

節 is the joint of a bamboo stem, the node that divides it into sections, and so a measure, a limit, a season's proper time. A lake receives water from above, and the figure is read as the limit of what it can hold. The statement of the hexagram promises success and adds its own measure: limits that are bitter cannot be kept firm. Our gloss is measure, the joint in the bamboo. The text is on the hexagram 60 page.

In the sample profile on our system page, key 60 is the Life's Work and so also the Brand: the Sun stood in it on 19 January 1989. Key 60 pairs with key 59 and has key 56 as its opposite on the wheel.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Harshness, is the top line, 苦節: bitter limits, which bring misfortune if pressed. It is rules so strict that no one can keep them. The Gift band, Proportion, is the Image, 君子以制數度: the noble person sets up number and measure, limits that fit what they measure. The Siddhi band, Sweetness, is the fifth line, 甘節: sweet limits, good fortune, limits kept gladly because they fit.

The bands describe the same limit felt as a burden, as a fit and as a pleasure. They are a theme and give no rule for anyone.

In a profile

Key 60 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 26°22′30″ Capricorn and 2°00′ 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 17 to 21 January. People born then have key 60 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 56, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 14 to 19 April, 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″ Capricorn is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 1°03′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

節 Jié, hexagram 60 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Kieh sourced

Trigram images

Lake / marsh below, Water above, as the Shuo Gua names them sourced

Our gloss

measure, the joint in the bamboo: EsoTerrier's own, the same in our I Ching chart, not a translator's title our construction

Our words for the three bands

Harshness, Proportion and Sweetness, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction

Opposite on the wheel

Key 56, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced

Pair in the received order

Key 59, 渙 Huàn: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced

Within and upside down

Lines 2 to 5 give 27 頤 Yí; the figure turned upside down gives 59 渙 Huàn sourced

Codon ring (Rudd)

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

Place on the wheel

Gate 60 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 26°22′30″ Capricorn to 2°00′ Aquarius (296.375° to 302° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)

Progress and attainment; but regulations that are severe and difficult cannot be permanent. The text in full is on the hexagram 60 page.

Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)

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

EsoTerrier

Limits and measure: it makes rules so strict that nobody can keep them, sets measures that fit what they measure, and at its peak keeps limits gladly because they fit.

Claims about it

• Key 60 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 60 belongs to the Ring of Gaia, a chemical family in the body tied to isoleucine.

  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 60 on the zodiac, 26°22′30″ Capricorn to 2°00′ 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

• Hexagram 60: Measure the I Ching text this key is read from
• Key 56: 旅 Lǚ, the traveller, lodging its opposite on the wheel
• Key 59: 渙 Huàn, scattering, dissolving its pair in the received order
• Key 27: 頤 Yí, nourishment, the jaws the hexagram within it, lines 2 to 5
• Human Design gate 60 the same place in the system the profile is calculated by