Meaning
Wood is below water: the bucket goes down into the well and comes up full. The hexagram is the well, the one thing in a village that does not move. Its Judgment opens with that permanence, "(the site of) a town may be changed", in Legge's English, while the well cannot be, and warns of the rope that does not reach and the bucket that breaks. The Image has the superior man encourage the people and urge them to help each other, as the well serves everyone who comes.
Human Design places gate 48 from 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Libra, in the Spleen centre, which the system ties to instinct and intuition. Its channel, which the school names The Wavelength, runs to gate 16 in the Throat, the centre of expression in its terms; the pair is in the Understanding circuit of the Collective group.
The engine names the gate Depth. We read it, in our own words, as a store of understanding that is always there and has to be drawn up to be of use. The hexagram's worry is the rope that is too short: depth that never reaches the surface does no good. Its lines move from a muddy well no one drinks from to the clear, cold spring at the top that is offered to all. Joined to gate 16, readiness and enthusiasm, the gate can be read as depth given a skill and a voice, so that what it holds can be shared.
Opposite gate 48 on the wheel is gate 21, biting through, and the school names the Right Angle Cross of Tension from 48 and 21 with 39 and 38.
On the wheel
Gate 48 covers 5°37′30″ of the zodiac, from 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Libra, the 45th gate counting from gate 41. In 2026 the Sun passes through it from 2 October to 8 October, 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″ Libra
- Line 2: 10°26′15″ to 11°22′30″ Libra
- Line 3: 11°22′30″ to 12°18′45″ Libra
- Line 4: 12°18′45″ to 13°15′ Libra
- Line 5: 13°15′ to 14°11′15″ Libra
- Line 6: 14°11′15″ to 15°07′30″ Libra
In a chart the gate is active when any of the 26 positions falls in it, and the channel The Wavelength is defined only when gate 16 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 (48/21 | 39/38), the Juxtaposition Cross of Depth (48/21 | 53/54) or the Left Angle Cross of Endeavor (48/21 | 53/54). 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)
- 48 井 Jǐng ䷯: Wind / wood below, Water above; Legge (1882) spells it Zing sourced
- Wheel position (Ra Uru Hu's wheel)
- 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Libra, 189.5° to 195.125° of the tropical zodiac: a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Centre (the system's association)
- Spleen: the system ties it to instinct and intuition. A name and an association, not anatomy sourced
- Channel and circuit
- 16-48 The Wavelength, to gate 16 in the Throat: Understanding circuit, Collective group sourced
- Gate opposite on the wheel
- Gate 21, The Hunter/Huntress, 180° away; its hexagram has every line of this one flipped sourced
- Crosses named from this gate
- Right Angle Cross of Tension (48/21 | 39/38); Juxtaposition Cross of Depth (48/21 | 53/54); Left Angle Cross of Endeavor (48/21 | 53/54) sourced
- Gate name
- Depth: 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 48, 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 store of understanding that has to be drawn up: read as depth of knowledge, and the care needed to bring it into use. our construction
How the schools read it
- The I Ching, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “(Looking at) Zing, (we think of) how (the site of) a town may be changed …”
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu; the school)
- Names the gate Depth and sets it in the Spleen centre, at one end of the channel The Wavelength. 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 store of understanding that has to be drawn up: read as depth of knowledge, and the care needed to bring it into use.
Claims about it
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Gate 48's place on the zodiac, 9°30′ to 15°07′30″ Libra, is where the I Ching itself puts hexagram 48.
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 Spleen centre, where gate 48 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 48 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.
