Meaning
After 剝, in which the last whole line stood alone at the top, 復 turns the figure over: one whole line has entered at the bottom. 復 means to come back, and the tradition reads it as the return of the light after the dark, movement starting again deep down. The Judgment is calm about it: free course, no one to trouble the comings and goings, friends arriving, and the return on the seventh day.
The Image ties the hexagram to the turn of the year: at the winter solstice, the early kings shut the passes, and merchants and travellers did not move. Rest, so that what returns can grow. In the Han calendars 復 is the eleventh lunar month, the solstice month, the first step of rising yang, and Shao Yong's circle of the sixty-four is traditionally aligned with it at the winter solstice. In our own reading, it is the hexagram of starting again, early and quietly.
The lines
The lines grade the ways of turning back. The first returns from an error before it has gone far, with no cause for regret and great good fortune; the second's return is admirable. The third returns again and again, which is risky but not wrong; the fourth walks in the middle of the others and "returning alone", in Legge's words, to its own path. The fifth returns nobly. The top line has lost the way back altogether, and the text marks it with calamity.
Its pair is 剝, hexagram 23; within 復 lies 坤, hexagram 2, and every line flipped gives 姤, hexagram 44, the opposite turn at the summer solstice.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 復 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 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 2 坤 Kūn, Earth's Yielding
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 19 臨 Lín, Drawing Near
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 36 明夷 Míng Yí, Brightness Wounded
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 51 震 Zhèn, Shock
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 3 屯 Zhūn, First Shoots
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 27 頤 Yí, Nourishment
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 2 坤 Kūn, Earth's Yielding. 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; 坤 yielding, compliant above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- eldest son below, mother above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- feet and dragon below; belly and ox above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Wood 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
- Month in the Han calendars (sovereign hexagram)
- The eleventh lunar month (子), with one yang line sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down: 23 剝 Bō, Stripping Away; every line flipped: 44 姤 Gòu, Encounter sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 24, from 37.625° to 43.25° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Return: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 復 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “In seven days comes his return. There will be advantage in whatever direction movement is made.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Thunder in the midst of the earth; the ancient kings closed the passes at the solstice so that merchants and princes did not travel.
- The Han calendars (1st century BCE)
- The hexagram of the eleventh lunar month, the month of 子: yang growing from below.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 坤 above when the year, month and day leave 0 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 24 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Thunder deep in the earth: after the turning point the light comes back by itself; rest while it returns, and turn back before a wrong road goes far.
Claims about it
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Gate 24 of Human Design, at 37.625° to 43.25° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 24.
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 復 Fù 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.
