Meaning
恆 is the same six lines as 咸 turned upside down, and the tradition reads the pair as a story: the young couple of hexagram 31 and the settled household of 32, the eldest son and eldest daughter in their places. The character means constant, enduring, lasting, and the Judgment, unusually, combines constancy with movement: progress, no error, firmness, and advantage in going in any direction. Duration here is not standing still.
The Image reads thunder and wind together and asks the superior man to stand firm and not change his course. Legge, commenting on the household reading, writes that he doubts "whether such application of his teaching was in the mind of king Wăn". In our own reading, 恆 is what keeps its direction through change, steady renewal rather than fixity.
The lines
The lines warn at both ends of the figure. The first wants permanence too soon and too deeply, and firmness itself goes wrong there; the second's regret vanishes. The third does not keep its virtue constant and meets disgrace; the fourth is "a field where there is no game", in Legge's words. The fifth keeps its virtue constant, which the text calls fortunate for a wife and not for a husband, a reading of its time. The top line is restless constancy, always in motion, and it goes badly.
Its pair is 咸, hexagram 31; within 恆 lies 夬, hexagram 43, and every line flipped gives 益, hexagram 42.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 恆 when the year, month and day leave 4 on eight, which puts 震 thunder above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 5, which puts 巽 wind 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 34 大壯 Dà Zhuàng, Great Power
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 62 小過 Xiǎo Guò, Small Excess
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 40 解 Xiè, Release
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 46 升 Shēng, Ascent
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 28 大過 Dà Guò, Great Excess
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 50 鼎 Dǐng, The Cauldron
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 43 夬 Guài, Breakthrough. 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)
- 巽 entering, pervading below; 震 moving, startling above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- eldest daughter below, eldest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- thighs and fowl below; feet and dragon above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Wood 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: 31 咸 Xián, Mutual Influence; every line flipped: 42 益 Yì, Increase sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 32, from 200.75° to 206.375° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Constancy: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 恆 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Hăng indicates successful progress and no error (in what it denotes). But the advantage will come from being firm and correct; and movement in any direction whatever will be advantageous.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Thunder and wind together; the superior man stands firm and does not change his course.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 震 above when the year, month and day leave 4 on eight, 巽 below when the same total with the hour leaves 5.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 32 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Thunder and wind, always together: what lasts by keeping its direction while it moves; constancy as steady renewal, not standing still.
Claims about it
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Gate 32 of Human Design, at 200.75° to 206.375° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 32.
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 恆 Héng 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.
