Key 7, 師 Shī: water held within the earth

Meaning

師 means a host or army, and also a teacher, one who leads many. The figure has a single strong line in the second place among five yielding ones: one leader at the centre of the lower trigram, with the many around it. Water inside the earth is the tradition's image of a force kept within the people, not standing apart from them. The Judgment says that with firmness and an experienced leader there is good fortune and no error. Our gloss is the army, leading. The text is on the hexagram 7 page.

We read the army as an image of any group that has to act as one. Key 7 pairs with key 8, the same lines turned over, where the many gather round a single centre of their own accord.

The three bands

The Shadow band, Unruliness, is the first line, 師出以律, 否臧凶: an army must set out in good order, and without it, even success turns out badly. A force with no rule of its own turns on itself. The Gift band, Discipline, is the Judgment's 丈人吉: good fortune with a mature, experienced leader, order kept from inside the ranks. The Siddhi band, Guardianship, is the Image, 君子以容民畜眾: water within the earth, and the noble person makes room for the people and gathers the multitude. Strength exists, at its peak, to shelter.

The bands are about organised strength: loose, ordered and protective.

In a profile

Key 7 belongs to no particular row. It stands in a profile wherever one of the thirteen bodies stood between 13°15′ Leo and 18°52′30″ 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 6 to 11 August. People born then have key 7 as their Life's Work and its opposite, key 13, as their Evolution, the Earth's place. For people born about three months later, from about 4 to 9 November, it is the Radiance, where the Sun stood at the design moment.

Each of its six lines is 56′15″ wide. A position from 13°15′ Leo is in line 1, read by our theme Foundation; one from 17°56′15″ 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

師 Shī, hexagram 7 in the received (King Wen) order of the Zhouyi; Legge (1882) writes the name Sze sourced

Trigram images

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

Our gloss

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

Our words for the three bands

Unruliness, Discipline and Guardianship, written in October 2026 from the hexagram's own texts; none is one of Rudd's words our construction

Opposite on the wheel

Key 13, 180° round the wheel, with every line reversed; Rudd calls it the programming partner sourced

Pair in the received order

Key 8, 比 Bǐ: the same six lines turned upside down, next to it in the received order sourced

Within and upside down

Lines 2 to 5 give 24 復 Fù; the figure turned upside down gives 8 比 Bǐ sourced

Codon ring (Rudd)

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

Place on the wheel

Gate 7 of Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987 to 1989), 13°15′ Leo to 18°52′30″ Leo (133.25° to 138.875° of tropical longitude): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced

How the schools read it

The Zhouyi, after Legge (1882)

With firmness and a leader of experience there will be good fortune and no error. The text in full is on the hexagram 7 page.

Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987 onward)

Gate 7, in the G 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 7, 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 13 its programming partner.

EsoTerrier

Collective strength and its order: it turns on itself without rules, holds together under a steady hand, and at its peak exists only to shelter the many.

Claims about it

• Key 7 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 7 belongs to the Ring of Union, a chemical family in the body tied to valine.

  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 7 on the zodiac, 13°15′ Leo to 18°52′30″ 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 7: The Army the I Ching text this key is read from
• Key 13: 同人 Tóng Rén, fellowship, people together its opposite on the wheel
• Key 8: 比 Bǐ, joining, alliance its pair in the received order
• Key 24: 復 Fù, return the hexagram within it, lines 2 to 5
• Human Design gate 7 the same place in the system the profile is calculated by