Meaning
Thunder below and the lake above: the Image sees thunder hidden in the marsh, the energy of the year gone in to rest, and has the superior man go indoors when it grows dark. The hexagram is following, and the tradition is careful to say that following has to be earned and chosen. Legge's Judgment promises great progress and success and adds a condition, "it will be advantageous to be firm and correct". The line texts are about whom one follows: the second line clings to "the little boy" and lets go of the man of age and experience, and the third does the reverse.
Human Design places gate 17 from 3°52′30″ to 9°30′ Aries, in the Ajna centre, the centre the system ties to the conceptual mind. Its channel, which the school names Acceptance, runs to gate 62 in the Throat; the pair is in the Understanding circuit of the Collective group.
The engine names the gate Opinions. We read it, in our own words, as the forming of a view, and the hexagram supplies a test for one: a view others can follow is one that itself follows what is so, the way the thunder follows the season into rest. At the channel's other end gate 62 carries the small excess, the hexagram of attention to small things. Read together, the two can be taken as an opinion that is made to answer to details before it is spoken.
This is one of 13 gates where the engine's name differs from the Definitive Book's title as the pyhd tables record it; the book has the singular, Opinion. Opposite gate 17 on the wheel is gate 18, the repair of what has decayed, and in the I Ching's own order the two hexagrams are also a pair. The school names a cross, Service, from the two of them.
On the wheel
Gate 17 covers 5°37′30″ of the zodiac, from 3°52′30″ to 9°30′ Aries, the 12th gate counting from gate 41. In 2026 the Sun passes through it from 24 March to 30 March, and within a day of those dates in other years. Each of its six lines covers 56′15″:
- Line 1: 3°52′30″ to 4°48′45″ Aries
- Line 2: 4°48′45″ to 5°45′ Aries
- Line 3: 5°45′ to 6°41′15″ Aries
- Line 4: 6°41′15″ to 7°37′30″ Aries
- Line 5: 7°37′30″ to 8°33′45″ Aries
- Line 6: 8°33′45″ to 9°30′ Aries
In a chart the gate is active when any of the 26 positions falls in it, and the channel Acceptance is defined only when gate 62 is active too, by either set.
When the Personality Sun is in this gate, the school's table names the cross by the angle of the profile: the Right Angle Cross of Service (17/18 | 58/52), the Juxtaposition Cross of Opinions (17/18 | 38/39) or the Left Angle Cross of Upheaval (17/18 | 38/39). The four numbers are the Personality Sun and Earth, then the Design Sun and Earth. We give the names only.
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 (the I Ching)
- 17 隨 Suí ䷐: Thunder below, Lake / marsh above; Legge (1882) spells it Sui sourced
- Wheel position (Ra Uru Hu's wheel)
- 3°52′30″ to 9°30′ Aries, 3.875° to 9.5° of the tropical zodiac: a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Centre (the system's association)
- Ajna: the system ties it to the conceptual mind. A name and an association, not anatomy sourced
- Channel and circuit
- 17-62 Acceptance, to gate 62 in the Throat: Understanding circuit, Collective group sourced
- Gate opposite on the wheel
- Gate 18, Correction, 180° away; its hexagram has every line of this one flipped sourced
- Crosses named from this gate
- Right Angle Cross of Service (17/18 | 58/52); Juxtaposition Cross of Opinions (17/18 | 38/39); Left Angle Cross of Upheaval (17/18 | 38/39) sourced
- Gate name
- Opinions: the name the engine prints. The Definitive Book (2011), as the pyhd tables record it, titles the gate "Opinion". A name, not the hexagram's disputed
- Gene Keys (Richard Rudd, 2009)
- Key 17, from the same hexagram at the same place on the wheel; our Gene Keys Profile page for it gives our own words sourced
- Our reading
- A view worth following because it follows something first: read as an opinion that is offered, tested against the facts, and held only as firmly as they allow. our construction
How the schools read it
- The I Ching, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Sui indicates that (under its conditions) there will be great progress and success. But it will be advantageous to be firm and correct.”
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu; the school)
- Names the gate Opinions and sets it in the Ajna centre, at one end of the channel Acceptance. Its descriptions of the gate and its six lines are in Ra Uru Hu's books, in copyright; we do not quote or paraphrase them.
- The independent schools
- Zeno Dickson and Chaitanyo Taschler, Chetan Parkyn, Karen Curry Parker and later teachers compute the same gate at the same place, and read it in their own words.
- EsoTerrier
- A view worth following because it follows something first: read as an opinion that is offered, tested against the facts, and held only as firmly as they allow.
Claims about it
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Gate 17's place on the zodiac, 3°52′30″ to 9°30′ Aries, is where the I Ching itself puts hexagram 17.
falseWhat the record shows: The wheel is Ra Uru Hu's arrangement: Shao Yong's 11th-century circle of the 64, rotated so that hexagram 41 starts at 2° Aquarius. No Chinese source ties a hexagram to degrees of the zodiac.
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The Ajna centre, where gate 17 sits, is an organ or gland, and the gate tells something about the body.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: The centre's name is a name. The schools' pairing of the centres with organs and glands, taken from the chakra books of the 1920s, has no physiological correspondence that anyone has shown, and we never read a gate or a centre as the body or its health.
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Gate 17 is one of the 64 codons of the genetic code, so it marks something in a person's genes.
falseWhat the record shows: Both sets have 64 members because both are built from a small alphabet in groups: two kinds of line in six places, four bases in three. Nothing beyond the count matches.
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Gate 17 has one canonical name.
disputedWhat the record shows: Several sets circulate. The engine prints "Opinions"; the Definitive Book, as the pyhd tables record it, has "Opinion". We keep the engine's so the chart and the page agree.
