Meaning
Six whole lines and nothing else: 乾 is yang without a trace of yin, the trigram of heaven set on top of itself. The Zhouyi's statement for it is four words long in Chinese, 元亨利貞, and Legge renders them as four qualities: great and originating, penetrating, advantageous, correct and firm. One of the Wings, the Wenyan, reads them as four virtues; Zhu Xi read them as two answers a diviner might receive, "greatly penetrating" and "requires to be correct and firm". Legge notes both and follows the first. Either way the four characters recur all through the book, so the first hexagram also teaches the reader its vocabulary.
The Image, the Wings' short reading of the two trigrams, sees heaven in ceaseless motion and asks for the same of a person: effort that does not flag. Read in our own words, 乾 is the energy that starts things and keeps them going. The tradition never treats that as simply good. Strength that will not stop has no limit except exhaustion, and the line texts say so plainly.
The lines
The six lines tell one story, a dragon's. At the bottom it lies hidden in the deep, "not the time for active doing", in Legge's words; in the second place it appears in the field; in the third a person stays watchful all day and still careful at night; in the fourth the dragon seems to leap but is still in the water; in the fifth it is on the wing in the sky. The top line is the dragon that has gone beyond its limits, and there is "occasion for repentance". A seventh statement, found only here and in hexagram 2, speaks of a host of dragons without heads, which the commentary Legge follows reads as strength that has learned not to lead.
Its pair in the received order is 坤, six broken lines: the two open the book together, and the Wings treat them as the gateway to the rest.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 乾 when the year, month and day leave 1 on eight, which puts 乾 heaven above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 1, which puts 乾 heaven below. Which line moves depends on what the whole total leaves on six, and each line turns the figure into a different hexagram:
- Line 1 (初九) moving: becomes 44 姤 Gòu, Encounter
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 13 同人 Tóng Rén, Fellowship
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 10 履 Lǚ, Treading
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 9 小畜 Xiǎo Xù, Small Restraint
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 14 大有 Dà Yǒu, Great Possession
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 43 夬 Guài, Breakthrough
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 1 乾 Qián, Heaven's Strength. Everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour has the same cast, so the figure describes a moment, not a person.
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.
- Trigram virtues (Shuogua, chapter 7)
- 乾 strong, untiring, doubled, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- father, doubled sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- head and horse, doubled sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Metal, doubled. The Han assignment of 梅花易數, book 1, also used by Jing Fang; not stated as such in the Zhouyi sourced
- Month in the Han calendars (sovereign hexagram)
- The fourth lunar month (巳), with six yang lines sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down it is itself; every line flipped: 2 坤 Kūn, Earth's Yielding sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 1, from 223.25° to 228.875° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Heaven's Strength: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 乾 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Khien (represents) what is great and originating, penetrating, advantageous, correct and firm.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Heaven in its motion gives the idea of strength; the superior man makes himself tirelessly active.
- The Han calendars (1st century BCE)
- The hexagram of the fourth lunar month, the month of 巳: yang at its height.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 乾 above when the year, month and day leave 1 on eight, 乾 below when the same total with the hour leaves 1.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 1 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Heaven doubled: strength that keeps moving as the sky does, and is told to act when the time is ripe and to stop short of the height where the dragon regrets.
Claims about it
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Gate 1 of Human Design, at 223.25° to 228.875° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 1.
falseWhat the record shows: The wheel is Shao Yong's circle rotated by Ra Uru Hu in 1987 to 1989 so that hexagram 41 starts at 2° Aquarius. No Chinese source we found puts the hexagrams on degrees of the zodiac.
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Being born under 乾 Qián fixes a person's character.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A modern reading with no source in the tradition. The Zhouyi has no birth hexagram; the cast reads a figure, not a person, and everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour shares it.
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The numbering of the trigrams that puts 乾 first is as old as the hexagram itself.
falseWhat the record shows: The Earlier Heaven order, 乾 1 to 坤 8, is Shao Yong's, of the 11th century, first printed by Zhu Xi in 1188; the Song school credited it to Fuxi. The Zhouyi numbers only the hexagrams.
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Hexagram 1 stands first because King Wen put it there.
told as loreWhat the record shows: The received order's age and author are unknown; the Mawangdui copy of 168 BCE orders the hexagrams by their trigrams instead. We number by the received order because every tradition does.
