Meaning
Where hexagram 9 holds back strength with a single broken line, 大畜 holds it with a mountain: the trigram of heaven, three whole lines, sits beneath 艮, the trigram of stopping. The name joins 大, great, to 畜, to rear, to store, to restrain, and the hexagram is about great reserves held in check. The Judgment counsels firmness and says something specific: it is good not to live on one's revenues at home but to serve, and good to cross the great stream.
The Image reads heaven inside the mountain as a mind storing up the record of the past: the superior man learns the words and deeds of earlier people and so builds his character. In our own reading, 大畜 is accumulated strength that waits for its road to open, and that is shaped while it waits.
The lines
The lower lines are strength being held back. The first is in danger and does better to stop; the second is "a carriage with the strap under it removed", in Legge's words, unable to go. The third drives good horses and is told to practise its driving and its defence every day. The two broken lines above are restraint made gentle: the fourth is a young bull with a board fixed across its horns, and the fifth a boar whose tusks are made harmless, both read as strength trained before it can do damage. At the top the way is open and the subject commands "the firmament of heaven", in Legge's English.
Its pair is 无妄, hexagram 25; within it lies 歸妹, hexagram 54, and every line flipped gives 萃, hexagram 45.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 大畜 when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, which puts 艮 mountain above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 1, which puts 乾 heaven 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 18 蠱 Gǔ, Repairing Decay
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 22 賁 Bì, Adornment
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 41 損 Sǔn, Decrease
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 14 大有 Dà Yǒu, Great Possession
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 9 小畜 Xiǎo Xù, Small Restraint
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 11 泰 Tài, Flow
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 54 歸妹 Guī Mèi, The Younger Sister Weds. 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)
- 乾 strong, untiring below; 艮 stopping, at rest above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- father below, youngest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- head and horse below; hands and dog above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Metal 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: 25 无妄 Wú Wàng, Without Pretence; every line flipped: 45 萃 Cuì, Gathering sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 26, from 257° to 262.625° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Great Restraint: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 大畜 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Under the conditions of Tâ Khû it will be advantageous to be firm and correct.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Heaven in the midst of a mountain; the superior man stores up the words and deeds of former men to build his virtue.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 艮 above when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, 乾 below when the same total with the hour leaves 1.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 26 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Heaven within the mountain: great strength gathered and held in store; learn from what was said and done before, and keep the strength until the road opens.
Claims about it
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Gate 26 of Human Design, at 257° to 262.625° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 26.
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 大畜 Dà Xù 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.
