Meaning
A mountain is the highest thing on the earth; here it is set beneath it. The figure has one whole line, in the third place at the top of the lower trigram, under five broken ones: strength that does not push upward. 謙 means modesty, and the Judgment is brief and favourable: progress, and a good end to what the humble undertake. Legge's romanisation for it, Khien, is spelt the same as his name for hexagram 1, a collision that tone marks avoid: 乾 is qián, 謙 is qiān.
The Image reads the mountain within the earth as a lesson in levelling: the superior man takes from what has too much and adds to what has too little, and so balances things out. In our own words, modesty here is not self-effacement but a kind of accuracy about one's own size, and the tradition sees it as the quality that lets anything be finished.
The lines
The lines are unusual for being favourable throughout. The first is humility added to humility, and with it even the great stream can be crossed; the second is humility that others have come to recognise. The third, the hexagram's only whole line, is "the superior man of (acknowledged) merit", in Legge's words, who keeps his success to the end. The fourth goes on stirring up its humility; the fifth, without being rich, can rally its neighbours. The top line repeats the recognised humility of the second and turns it to setting its own house in order.
Its pair is 豫, hexagram 16, the same lines upside down; within it lies 解, hexagram 40.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 謙 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 7, which puts 艮 mountain 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 36 明夷 Míng Yí, Brightness Wounded
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 46 升 Shēng, Ascent
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 2 坤 Kūn, Earth's Yielding
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 62 小過 Xiǎo Guò, Small Excess
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 39 蹇 Jiǎn, Obstruction
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 52 艮 Gèn, Stopping
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 40 解 Xiè, Release. 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)
- 艮 stopping, at rest below; 坤 yielding, compliant above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- youngest son below, mother above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- hands and dog below; belly and ox above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Earth 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
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down: 16 豫 Yù, Readiness; every line flipped: 10 履 Lǚ, Treading sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 15, from 88.25° to 93.875° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Modesty: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 謙 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Khien indicates progress and success. The superior man, (being humble as it implies), will have a (good) issue (to his undertakings).”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- A mountain in the midst of the earth; the superior man reduces what is excessive and adds where there is lack, to bring about balance.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 坤 above when the year, month and day leave 0 on eight, 艮 below when the same total with the hour leaves 7.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 15 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- A mountain hidden within the earth: the high brought low and the low raised up; weighing things and sharing them out evenly, modesty carries an undertaking to its end.
Claims about it
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Gate 15 of Human Design, at 88.25° to 93.875° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 15.
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 謙 Qiān 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.
