Meaning
Here everything is in its natural place, and that is the trouble. Heaven rises, earth sinks, and with heaven already on top and earth already below, the two move away from each other and nothing passes between them. 否 means to deny or to block. The Judgment speaks of a want of understanding between people, an hour unfavourable even to those who act rightly, in which "the great gone and the little come", the reverse of hexagram 11.
The Image draws a lesson of withdrawal: when heaven and earth do not communicate, the superior man holds back his worth and keeps out of the way of the trouble the time brings. Among the Han calendar's twelve hexagrams 否 is the seventh lunar month, autumn, when yin has risen to the middle of the figure. In our reading the hexagram is a description of a season in which channels are closed.
The lines
The first line repeats the grass of hexagram 11, pulled up with its roots joined, but here the stalks stay together in patience. The second is patient and obedient; the third is "ashamed of the purpose folded (in his breast)", in Legge's words. The change comes with the whole lines above: the fourth acts as heaven ordains and its companions share in it; the fifth brings the blockage to an end while saying to itself, "We may perish! We may perish!", the caution that keeps a recovery firm. At the top the blockage is overthrown, and joy follows.
Within 否 lies 漸, hexagram 53, the gradual advance; its pair and opposite is 泰, hexagram 11.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 否 when the year, month and day leave 1 on eight, which puts 乾 heaven above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 0, counted as 8, which puts 坤 earth 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 (初六) moving: becomes 25 无妄 Wú Wàng, Without Pretence
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 6 訟 Sòng, Dispute
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 33 遯 Dùn, Retreat
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 20 觀 Guān, Looking Out
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 35 晉 Jìn, Advance
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 45 萃 Cuì, Gathering
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 53 漸 Jiàn, Step by Step. 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)
- 坤 yielding, compliant below; 乾 strong, untiring above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- mother below, father above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- belly and ox below; head and horse above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Earth below, Metal 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 seventh lunar month (申), with three yang lines sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down: 11 泰 Tài, Flow; every line flipped: 11 泰 Tài, Flow sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 12, from 82.625° to 88.25° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Blockage: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 否 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “In Phî there is the want of good understanding between the (different classes of) men, and its indication is unfavourable to the firm and correct course of the superior man.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Heaven and earth not in communication; the superior man holds back his virtue and avoids the calamities that threaten.
- The Han calendars (1st century BCE)
- The hexagram of the seventh lunar month, the month of 申: yin growing from below.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 乾 above when the year, month and day leave 1 on eight, 坤 below when the same total with the hour leaves 0.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 12 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Heaven drawing away above, earth sinking below: the two no longer meet and good words find no hearing; the text counsels holding back, keeping one's worth out of sight and waiting for the turn.
Claims about it
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Gate 12 of Human Design, at 82.625° to 88.25° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 12.
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 否 Pǐ 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.
