Meaning
Fire burns upward and heaven is above: the two trigrams move the same way, and the name 同人 says plainly what that means, people being the same, or together. The single broken line stands in the second place, at the centre of the lower trigram, and the five whole lines are read as gathering round it. The Judgment sets the gathering in the open country, far from the clan and the court, and says that there it brings progress, the great crossing and the firmness of the superior man.
The Image draws a lesson that keeps fellowship from being uniformity: with heaven above and fire below, the superior man sorts things by their kinds. People can join without pretending to be alike. In our own words, the hexagram describes a union that is public and open, and is suspicious of the kind that forms behind closed doors.
The lines
The lines trace fellowship from the threshold outward. The first goes out of its own gate and is blameless; the second keeps to its kin, and there is regret. The third hides its weapons in the long grass and watches from a high mound for three years without acting; the fourth climbs the city wall and does not attack. In the fifth the people who are joined "first wails and cries out, and then laughs", in Legge's English, and the two who belong together meet at last. The top line gathers people in the suburbs, the edge of the open land.
Its pair is 大有, hexagram 14, the same figure upside down; within it lies 姤, hexagram 44.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 同人 when the year, month and day leave 1 on eight, which puts 乾 heaven above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 3, which puts 離 fire 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 33 遯 Dùn, Retreat
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 1 乾 Qián, Heaven's Strength
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 25 无妄 Wú Wàng, Without Pretence
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 37 家人 Jiā Rén, The Household
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 30 離 Lí, Brightness
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 49 革 Gé, Changing the Hide
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 44 姤 Gòu, Encounter. 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)
- 離 bright, attached below; 乾 strong, untiring above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- middle daughter below, father above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- eyes and pheasant below; head and horse above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Fire 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
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down: 14 大有 Dà Yǒu, Great Possession; every line flipped: 7 師 Shī, The Army sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 13, from 313.25° to 318.875° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Fellowship: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 同人 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Thung Zăn (or 'Union of men') appears here (as we find it) in the (remote districts of the) country, indicating progress and success.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Heaven with fire beneath it; the superior man distinguishes things according to their kinds.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 乾 above when the year, month and day leave 1 on eight, 離 below when the same total with the hour leaves 3.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 13 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Fire under heaven: people joined in the open country, on common ground; the bond holds when it rests on what is shared and public, not on clan or faction.
Claims about it
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Gate 13 of Human Design, at 313.25° to 318.875° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 13.
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 同人 Tóng Rén 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.
