Meaning
The ground opens and thunder breaks out of it: the trigram of movement over the trigram of yielding. The single whole line stands in the fourth place, and the five broken lines are read as responding to it, as a crowd follows the one who stirs it. 豫 means delight, and also to be ready or to foresee, and the Judgment gives the political reading: a time when leaders can be appointed and hosts set moving, because people are willing.
The Image ties the hexagram to music. Thunder issues from the earth, and the ancient kings made music to honour virtue and offered it to God and to their ancestors; shared feeling is what moves people together. In our own reading 豫 is the energy of something that has been waiting and is now released, and the tradition values it when it carries others along and mistrusts it when it becomes indulgence.
The lines
Most of the lines are warnings. The first proclaims its own pleasure and the text marks it with evil; the third looks upward for favours while it enjoys itself, and regret comes if it understands too late. Against them stands the second, "firm as a rock", in Legge's English, which sees a thing before it has come about. The fourth is the source of the delight, told to keep suspicion out of its mind so that friends gather; the top line is a mind darkened by pleasure, which can still change course.
Its pair is 謙, hexagram 15; within 豫 lies 蹇, hexagram 39, and every line flipped gives 小畜, hexagram 9.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 豫 when the year, month and day leave 4 on eight, which puts 震 thunder 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 51 震 Zhèn, Shock
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 40 解 Xiè, Release
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 62 小過 Xiǎo Guò, Small Excess
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 2 坤 Kūn, Earth's Yielding
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 45 萃 Cuì, Gathering
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 35 晉 Jìn, Advance
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 39 蹇 Jiǎn, Obstruction. 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; 震 moving, startling above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- mother below, eldest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- belly and ox below; feet and dragon above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Earth below, Wood 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: 15 謙 Qiān, Modesty; every line flipped: 9 小畜 Xiǎo Xù, Small Restraint sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 16, from 65.75° to 71.375° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Readiness: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 豫 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Yü indicates that, (in the state which it implies), feudal princes may be set up, and the hosts put in motion, with advantage.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Thunder issuing from the earth; the ancient kings composed music, honoured virtue and offered it to God and their ancestors.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 震 above when the year, month and day leave 4 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 16 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Thunder bursting out of the earth: a stir of delight that moves others to move with it, honoured as music and offering, and mistrusted when it is trumpeted or chased.
Claims about it
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Gate 16 of Human Design, at 65.75° to 71.375° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 16.
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 豫 Yù 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.
