Meaning
Thunder above and water below: the storm breaks and the air clears. The hexagram is release, deliverance, the loosening of what was tight, and its Judgment gives advice for the time after a difficulty: if nothing more is needed, "there will be good fortune in coming back (to the old conditions)", in Legge's English, and if something is needed, it should be done early. The Image has the superior man forgive mistakes and deal leniently with wrongs.
Human Design places gate 40 from 5°45′ to 11°22′30″ Virgo, in the Heart centre, one of the four motors, which the system ties to will. Its channel, which the school names Community, runs to gate 37 in the Solar Plexus; the pair is in the Ego circuit of the school's Tribal group.
The engine names the gate Aloneness. With its hexagram, we read it in our own words as the release after effort, and the solitude in which it is taken: the will that has done its share for others and now steps away to recover. The hexagram's advice is to return to ordinary conditions once the knot is undone, and not to keep fighting a battle that is over. Joined to gate 37, the household, the gate can be read as the give and take of a bond, work for the group and then time apart from it.
Opposite gate 40 on the wheel is gate 37, its channel partner; the pair faces itself across the circle. The school names a cross, Planning, from 40 and 37 with 16 and 9. Aloneness here is the gate's name.
On the wheel
Gate 40 covers 5°37′30″ of the zodiac, from 5°45′ to 11°22′30″ Virgo, the 39th gate counting from gate 41. In 2026 the Sun passes through it from 29 August to 3 September, and within a day of those dates in other years. Each of its six lines covers 56′15″:
- Line 1: 5°45′ to 6°41′15″ Virgo
- Line 2: 6°41′15″ to 7°37′30″ Virgo
- Line 3: 7°37′30″ to 8°33′45″ Virgo
- Line 4: 8°33′45″ to 9°30′ Virgo
- Line 5: 9°30′ to 10°26′15″ Virgo
- Line 6: 10°26′15″ to 11°22′30″ Virgo
In a chart the gate is active when any of the 26 positions falls in it, and the channel Community is defined only when gate 37 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 Planning (40/37 | 16/9), the Juxtaposition Cross of Denial (40/37 | 35/5) or the Left Angle Cross of Migration (40/37 | 35/5). 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)
- 40 解 Xiè ䷧: Water below, Thunder above; Legge (1882) spells it Kieh sourced
- Wheel position (Ra Uru Hu's wheel)
- 5°45′ to 11°22′30″ Virgo, 155.75° to 161.375° 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
- 37-40 Community, to gate 37 in the Solar Plexus: Ego circuit, Tribal group sourced
- Gate opposite on the wheel
- Gate 37, Friendship, 180° away; its hexagram has every line of this one flipped sourced
- Crosses named from this gate
- Right Angle Cross of Planning (40/37 | 16/9); Juxtaposition Cross of Denial (40/37 | 35/5); Left Angle Cross of Migration (40/37 | 35/5) sourced
- Gate name
- Aloneness: 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 40, 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
- Rest after effort, taken alone: read as the will to provide for others, and the need, once it is done, to withdraw and recover. our construction
How the schools read it
- The I Ching, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “If no (further) operations be called for, there will be good fortune in coming back (to the old conditions).”
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu; the school)
- Names the gate Aloneness and sets it in the Heart centre, at one end of the channel Community. 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
- Rest after effort, taken alone: read as the will to provide for others, and the need, once it is done, to withdraw and recover.
Claims about it
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Gate 40's place on the zodiac, 5°45′ to 11°22′30″ Virgo, is where the I Ching itself puts hexagram 40.
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 40 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 40 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.
