Meaning
Fire is below and a lake above: each would put the other out. The character 革 is an animal's hide stripped and renewed, and the hexagram is revolution, change in the order of things. Its Judgment is famous for its caution about timing: "(What takes place as indicated by) Ko is believed in only after it has been accomplished", in Legge's English. People trust a change only when they see it done. The Image takes the hexagram to the calendar: the superior man sets the seasons in order, as revolution follows the turn of the year.
Human Design places gate 49 from 18°52′30″ to 24°30′ Aquarius, fourth on the wheel after 41, 19 and 13, in the Solar Plexus centre, the motor the system ties to emotion. Its channel, which the school names Synthesis, runs to gate 19 in the Root; the pair is in the Ego circuit of the school's Tribal group.
The engine names the gate Principles. We read it, in our own words, as change made for a reason that can be stated: the feeling that a relationship or an arrangement must change, and the principle that justifies it. The hexagram adds what the tradition always says about revolution, that it must come at the right time and win belief by its results. The line texts are a slow escalation, from the hide of a yellow ox that binds, to the tiger and the leopard that change their markings. Joined to gate 19, drawing near, the gate can be read as the terms on which people are let close, and when those terms are rewritten.
Opposite gate 49 on the wheel is gate 4, the untaught mind, and the school names the Right Angle Cross of Explanation from 49 and 4 with 43 and 23.
On the wheel
Gate 49 covers 5°37′30″ of the zodiac, from 18°52′30″ to 24°30′ Aquarius, the 4th gate counting from gate 41. In 2026 the Sun passes through it from 7 February to 13 February, and within a day of those dates in other years. Each of its six lines covers 56′15″:
- Line 1: 18°52′30″ to 19°48′45″ Aquarius
- Line 2: 19°48′45″ to 20°45′ Aquarius
- Line 3: 20°45′ to 21°41′15″ Aquarius
- Line 4: 21°41′15″ to 22°37′30″ Aquarius
- Line 5: 22°37′30″ to 23°33′45″ Aquarius
- Line 6: 23°33′45″ to 24°30′ Aquarius
In a chart the gate is active when any of the 26 positions falls in it, and the channel Synthesis is defined only when gate 19 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 Explanation (49/4 | 43/23), the Juxtaposition Cross of Principles (49/4 | 14/8) or the Left Angle Cross of Revolution (49/4 | 14/8). 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)
- 49 革 Gé ䷰: Fire below, Lake / marsh above; Legge (1882) spells it Ko sourced
- Wheel position (Ra Uru Hu's wheel)
- 18°52′30″ to 24°30′ Aquarius, 318.875° to 324.5° of the tropical zodiac: a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Centre (the system's association)
- Solar Plexus: the system ties it to emotion. A name and an association, not anatomy sourced
- Channel and circuit
- 19-49 Synthesis, to gate 19 in the Root: Ego circuit, Tribal group sourced
- Gate opposite on the wheel
- Gate 4, Formulization, 180° away; its hexagram has every line of this one flipped sourced
- Crosses named from this gate
- Right Angle Cross of Explanation (49/4 | 43/23); Juxtaposition Cross of Principles (49/4 | 14/8); Left Angle Cross of Revolution (49/4 | 14/8) sourced
- Gate name
- Principles: 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 49, 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
- Change made on principle: read as feeling that decides when a bond must be renewed or let go, and is trusted once the change is seen to be right. our construction
How the schools read it
- The I Ching, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “(What takes place as indicated by) Ko is believed in only after it has been accomplished.”
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu; the school)
- Names the gate Principles and sets it in the Solar Plexus centre, at one end of the channel Synthesis. 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
- Change made on principle: read as feeling that decides when a bond must be renewed or let go, and is trusted once the change is seen to be right.
Claims about it
-
Gate 49's place on the zodiac, 18°52′30″ to 24°30′ Aquarius, is where the I Ching itself puts hexagram 49.
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.
-
The Solar Plexus centre, where gate 49 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.
-
Gate 49 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.
