Meaning
Thunder, the eldest son, has gone down beneath the lake, the youngest daughter: strength places itself under gladness and moves with it. 隨 means to follow, and the hexagram looks at following from both sides, the one who goes after and the one who is gone after. Its Judgment is all promise with one condition attached: great progress, provided there is firmness and correctness, and then no error.
The Image is an autumn picture, thunder lying quiet inside a marsh, and its lesson is simple: when it grows dark, the superior man goes indoors to rest. In our own reading, 隨 is about adapting to the hour rather than forcing one's own, and about knowing what one follows and why. The pair it forms with hexagram 18 sets willing adjustment beside the repair of what neglect has spoiled.
The lines
The lines turn on choosing whom to follow. The first changes what it pursues and goes out of its own gate to find companions, and gains by it. The second and third are a matched pair: one "cleaves to the little boy, and lets go the man of age and experience", in Legge's English, and the other does the reverse and gets what it seeks. The fourth is followed by others and is warned that even then trouble comes unless its sincerity is plain. The fifth is a ruler sincere in fostering what is good; the top line is bound fast to that sincerity, and the king makes his offering on the western mountain.
Its pair, 蠱, is both its inverse and its opposite, as happens with only four pairs in the book; within 隨 lies 漸, hexagram 53.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 隨 when the year, month and day leave 2 on eight, which puts 兌 lake above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 4, which puts 震 thunder 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 45 萃 Cuì, Gathering
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 58 兌 Duì, Openness
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 49 革 Gé, Changing the Hide
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 3 屯 Zhūn, First Shoots
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 51 震 Zhèn, Shock
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 25 无妄 Wú Wàng, Without Pretence
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)
- 震 moving, startling below; 兌 pleased, open above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- eldest son below, youngest daughter above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- feet and dragon below; mouth and sheep above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Wood 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: 18 蠱 Gǔ, Repairing Decay; every line flipped: 18 蠱 Gǔ, Repairing Decay sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 17, from 3.875° to 9.5° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Following: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 隨 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Sui indicates that (under its conditions) there will be great progress and success. But it will be advantageous to be firm and correct.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Thunder hidden in the midst of a marsh; the superior man goes indoors to rest when it is getting dark.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 兌 above when the year, month and day leave 2 on eight, 震 below when the same total with the hour leaves 4.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 17 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Thunder within the lake: adapting to the time, as one goes in to rest at nightfall; to be followed, first follow what is right, and know what you hold on to and why.
Claims about it
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Gate 17 of Human Design, at 3.875° to 9.5° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 17.
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 隨 Suí 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.
