Meaning
At first sight the figure looks upside down: heaven, which rises, has been put below, and earth, which sinks, on top. That is the point of it. Each moves towards the other, so the two meet and mix, and 泰, ease or peace, is the name for that exchange. Three whole lines rise from the bottom and three broken lines stand above them, and the Judgment reads the figure as "the little gone and the great come", in Legge's English.
The Image is heaven and earth in free communication, and the ruler's task is to shape his measures to their rhythm so that the people benefit. Among the twelve hexagrams of the Han calendars, 泰 is the first lunar month, the opening of spring, with yang risen halfway. In our own reading this is a time when things connect and flow; the tradition never calls it permanent. Its pair, hexagram 12, is the same six lines turned over, and the two are read together as the turning of a season.
The lines
The first line is grass pulled up with its roots joined to others, so that one stalk brings the rest. The second bears with the uncultivated and does not forget the distant; the third holds the hexagram's warning, which Legge renders "no state of peace that is not liable to be disturbed", a level with no slope is not to be found. The fourth comes fluttering down and its neighbours join it unbidden; the fifth recalls a king's rule for giving his younger sister in marriage. At the top the city wall falls back into its moat, the image of ease run out.
Within 泰 lies 歸妹, hexagram 54, and its pair 否 is also its opposite: every line flipped and the figure upside down give the same hexagram.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 泰 when the year, month and day leave 0, counted as 8 on eight, which puts 坤 earth 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 46 升 Shēng, Ascent
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 36 明夷 Míng Yí, Brightness Wounded
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 19 臨 Lín, Drawing Near
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 34 大壯 Dà Zhuàng, Great Power
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 5 需 Xū, Waiting
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 26 大畜 Dà Xù, Great Restraint
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 54 歸妹 Guī Mèi, The Younger Sister Weds. 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 below; 坤 yielding, compliant above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- father below, mother above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- head and horse below; belly and ox above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Metal below, Earth above. 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 first lunar month (寅), with three yang lines sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down: 12 否 Pǐ, Blockage; every line flipped: 12 否 Pǐ, Blockage sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 11, from 262.625° to 268.25° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Flow: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 泰 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “In Thâi (we see) the little gone and the great come. (It indicates that) there will be good fortune, with progress and success.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Heaven and earth in communication; the sovereign completes his regulations after their courses, to benefit the people.
- The Han calendars (1st century BCE)
- The hexagram of the first lunar month, the month of 寅: yang growing from below.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 坤 above when the year, month and day leave 0 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 11 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Earth above, heaven below, the two meeting and exchanging: a time when things flow and connect, though no level ground is without its slope, so the balance is tended, not assumed.
Claims about it
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Gate 11 of Human Design, at 262.625° to 268.25° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 11.
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 泰 Tài 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 lower trigram of hexagram 11 is the subconscious and the upper the conscious self.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: The Wings call the lower trigram inner and the upper outer. The psychology is modern and unsourced.
