Meaning
Fire goes up and the lake goes down, so the trigrams turn away from each other: the hexagram is opposition, estrangement. The book is not alarmed by it. Its Judgment finds that "in small matters there will (still) be good success", in Legge's English, and the Image draws one of its more modern-sounding lessons: where there is general agreement, the superior man still allows for difference. The line texts are strange and vivid, a lost horse that comes back of itself and a wagon of ghosts that turns out to be a wedding party.
Human Design places gate 38 from 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Capricorn, in the Root centre, one of the four motors, which the system ties to pressure and drive. Its channel, which the school names Struggle, runs to gate 28 in the Spleen, the centre of instinct in its terms; the pair is in the Knowing circuit of the Individual group.
The engine names the gate The Fighter. We read it, in our own words, as the pressure to stand apart and hold one's own ground, and the question of what for. The hexagram's oppositions are mostly misunderstandings; its top line draws a bow at a stranger and lowers it on finding a suitor, not a raider. So the gate can be read as a fight that is worth having only when it is the right one, and its channel to gate 28, the overloaded beam, as the search for something that deserves the effort.
Opposite gate 38 on the wheel is gate 39, obstruction, which is also its pair in the I Ching's order. The school names a cross, Tension, from 38 and 39 with 48 and 21.
On the wheel
Gate 38 covers 5°37′30″ of the zodiac, from 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Capricorn, the 61st gate counting from gate 41. In 2026 the Sun passes through it from 31 December to 5 January, 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″ Capricorn
- Line 2: 10°26′15″ to 11°22′30″ Capricorn
- Line 3: 11°22′30″ to 12°18′45″ Capricorn
- Line 4: 12°18′45″ to 13°15′ Capricorn
- Line 5: 13°15′ to 14°11′15″ Capricorn
- Line 6: 14°11′15″ to 15°07′30″ Capricorn
In a chart the gate is active when any of the 26 positions falls in it, and the channel Struggle is defined only when gate 28 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 (38/39 | 48/21), the Juxtaposition Cross of Opposition (38/39 | 57/51) or the Left Angle Cross of Individualism (38/39 | 57/51). 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)
- 38 睽 Kuí ䷥: Lake / marsh below, Fire above; Legge (1882) spells it Khwei sourced
- Wheel position (Ra Uru Hu's wheel)
- 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Capricorn, 279.5° to 285.125° of the tropical zodiac: a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Centre (the system's association)
- Root: the system ties it to pressure and drive. A name and an association, not anatomy sourced
- Channel and circuit
- 28-38 Struggle, to gate 28 in the Spleen: Knowing circuit, Individual group sourced
- Gate opposite on the wheel
- Gate 39, Provocation, 180° away; its hexagram has every line of this one flipped sourced
- Crosses named from this gate
- Right Angle Cross of Tension (38/39 | 48/21); Juxtaposition Cross of Opposition (38/39 | 57/51); Left Angle Cross of Individualism (38/39 | 57/51) sourced
- Gate name
- The Fighter: 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 38, 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
- Opposition that keeps a person true to themselves: read as the pressure to stand apart, and to choose the struggles that are worth it. our construction
How the schools read it
- The I Ching, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Khwei indicates that, (notwithstanding the condition of things which it denotes), in small matters there will (still) be good success.”
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu; the school)
- Names the gate The Fighter and sets it in the Root centre, at one end of the channel Struggle. 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
- Opposition that keeps a person true to themselves: read as the pressure to stand apart, and to choose the struggles that are worth it.
Claims about it
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Gate 38's place on the zodiac, 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Capricorn, is where the I Ching itself puts hexagram 38.
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 Root centre, where gate 38 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 38 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.
