Meaning
The figure looks like an open mouth with something caught between the teeth: a whole line at the bottom and the top, broken lines between, and one whole line in the fourth place where the obstruction is. Thunder is below and lightning above, and the tradition reads the hexagram as biting through, dealing firmly with what stands in the way so that the jaws can meet. Legge's Judgment begins with successful progress. The text goes on to the law, and its lines describe old punishments, which we leave to the text.
Human Design places gate 21 from 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Aries, in the Heart centre, one of the four motors, which the system ties to will. Its channel, which the school names Money, runs to gate 45 in the Throat; we print the channel's name only. The pair is in the Ego circuit of the school's Tribal group. Jovian's beginner's page gives 10° Aries as an example of gate 25; on the published wheel, which every engine we checked uses, 10° Aries falls in gate 21.
The engine names the gate The Hunter/Huntress, a name with both forms in it. We read it, in our own words, as the will to take hold: to clear what blocks one's path and keep one's own affairs in order. The hexagram adds the condition the tradition always attaches to force. The jaws close on what is truly in the way, with clarity, and the Image pairs the thunder's decisiveness with the lightning's light, judgment that is seen to be fair.
Opposite gate 21 on the wheel is gate 48, the well, the hexagram of depth drawn up for everyone. Grip and source face each other on Ra Uru Hu's wheel, which is his arrangement and not the I Ching's.
On the wheel
Gate 21 covers 5°37′30″ of the zodiac, from 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Aries, the 13th gate counting from gate 41. In 2026 the Sun passes through it from 30 March to 4 April, and within a day of those dates in other years. Each of its six lines covers 56′15″:
- Line 1: 9°30′ to 10°26′15″ Aries
- Line 2: 10°26′15″ to 11°22′30″ Aries
- Line 3: 11°22′30″ to 12°18′45″ Aries
- Line 4: 12°18′45″ to 13°15′ Aries
- Line 5: 13°15′ to 14°11′15″ Aries
- Line 6: 14°11′15″ to 15°07′30″ Aries
In a chart the gate is active when any of the 26 positions falls in it, and the channel Money is defined only when gate 45 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 Tension (21/48 | 38/39), the Juxtaposition Cross of Control (21/48 | 54/53) or the Left Angle Cross of Endeavor (21/48 | 54/53). 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)
- 21 噬嗑 Shì Kè ䷔: Thunder below, Fire above; Legge (1882) spells it Shih Ho sourced
- Wheel position (Ra Uru Hu's wheel)
- 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Aries, 9.5° to 15.125° of the tropical zodiac: a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Centre (the system's association)
- Heart: the system ties it to will. A name and an association, not anatomy sourced
- Channel and circuit
- 21-45 Money, to gate 45 in the Throat: Ego circuit, Tribal group sourced
- Gate opposite on the wheel
- Gate 48, Depth, 180° away; its hexagram has every line of this one flipped sourced
- Crosses named from this gate
- Right Angle Cross of Tension (21/48 | 38/39); Juxtaposition Cross of Control (21/48 | 54/53); Left Angle Cross of Endeavor (21/48 | 54/53) sourced
- Gate name
- The Hunter/Huntress: the name the engine prints, the same as the Definitive Book's title as the pyhd tables record it. A name, not the hexagram's sourced
- Gene Keys (Richard Rudd, 2009)
- Key 21, 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
- Biting through what blocks the way: read as the will to take charge of one's own ground and keep it in order. our construction
How the schools read it
- The I Ching, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Shih Ho indicates successful progress (in the condition of things which it supposes). […]” (with its item on the law left out)
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu; the school)
- Names the gate The Hunter/Huntress and sets it in the Heart centre, at one end of the channel Money. 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
- Biting through what blocks the way: read as the will to take charge of one's own ground and keep it in order.
Claims about it
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Gate 21's place on the zodiac, 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Aries, is where the I Ching itself puts hexagram 21.
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 Heart centre, where gate 21 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 21 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.
