Meaning
Water lies on a mountain: danger in front, a steep slope behind. The hexagram is obstruction, and the tradition reads it as the time to stop and look for help rather than force a way through. Its Judgment gives directions, "advantage will be found in the south-west, and the contrary in the north-east", in Legge's English, and advises meeting the great man. The Image turns the obstacle inward: the superior man turns round to examine himself and cultivate his virtue.
Human Design places gate 39 from 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Cancer, in the Root centre, one of the four motors, which the system ties to pressure and drive. Its channel, which the school names Emoting, runs to gate 55 in the Solar Plexus, the motor it ties to emotion; the pair is in the Knowing circuit of the Individual group.
The engine names the gate Provocation. We read it, in our own words, as the pressure that meets an obstacle and pushes on it, testing what will move. The hexagram's advice suits that pressure well: when the way is blocked, look at oneself and look for allies. Its line texts repeat one pattern, going forward meets difficulty and coming back meets praise. Joined to gate 55, abundance, the gate can be read as a stirring that brings feeling to the surface, in oneself and in others.
Opposite gate 39 on the wheel is gate 38, opposition, its pair in the I Ching's order too. The school names a cross, Tension, from 39 and 38 with 21 and 48.
On the wheel
Gate 39 covers 5°37′30″ of the zodiac, from 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Cancer, the 29th gate counting from gate 41. In 2026 the Sun passes through it from 1 July to 7 July, 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″ Cancer
- Line 2: 10°26′15″ to 11°22′30″ Cancer
- Line 3: 11°22′30″ to 12°18′45″ Cancer
- Line 4: 12°18′45″ to 13°15′ Cancer
- Line 5: 13°15′ to 14°11′15″ Cancer
- Line 6: 14°11′15″ to 15°07′30″ Cancer
In a chart the gate is active when any of the 26 positions falls in it, and the channel Emoting is defined only when gate 55 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 (39/38 | 21/48), the Juxtaposition Cross of Provocation (39/38 | 51/57) or the Left Angle Cross of Individualism (39/38 | 51/57). 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)
- 39 蹇 Jiǎn ䷦: Mountain below, Water above; Legge (1882) spells it Kien sourced
- Wheel position (Ra Uru Hu's wheel)
- 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Cancer, 99.5° to 105.125° 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
- 39-55 Emoting, to gate 55 in the Solar Plexus: Knowing circuit, Individual group sourced
- Gate opposite on the wheel
- Gate 38, The Fighter, 180° away; its hexagram has every line of this one flipped sourced
- Crosses named from this gate
- Right Angle Cross of Tension (39/38 | 21/48); Juxtaposition Cross of Provocation (39/38 | 51/57); Left Angle Cross of Individualism (39/38 | 51/57) sourced
- Gate name
- Provocation: 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 39, 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
- The push that comes up against something: read as the pressure to stir things up, which turns inward when the way ahead is blocked. our construction
How the schools read it
- The I Ching, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “In (the state indicated by) Kien advantage will be found in the south-west, and the contrary in the north-east.”
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu; the school)
- Names the gate Provocation and sets it in the Root centre, at one end of the channel Emoting. 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
- The push that comes up against something: read as the pressure to stir things up, which turns inward when the way ahead is blocked.
Claims about it
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Gate 39's place on the zodiac, 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Cancer, is where the I Ching itself puts hexagram 39.
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 39 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 39 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.
