Meaning
Heaven's strength below and thunder's movement above: the figure is force on the move. Four whole lines have climbed from the bottom, and only two broken lines are left at the top. 大壯 means great strength, and the Judgment, one short clause in Legge's English, says only that firmness and correctness are advantageous. The tradition reads that brevity as the point: power is only as good as the direction it takes.
The Image makes the same point from the other side: with thunder above the sky, the superior man takes no step that propriety does not allow. Among the Han calendar's twelve hexagrams 大壯 is the second lunar month, around the spring equinox, with yang four lines strong. In our own reading, the hexagram is less about having strength than about restraint in using it.
The lines
The lines keep coming back to a ram. The first puts its strength into its toes, and to advance from there goes badly; the second is simply firm and fortunate. The third is the warning: small people use all their strength, the superior man does not, and a ram that butts a hedge gets its horns caught. In the fourth the hedge opens and the horns are free, strength "like that in the wheel-spokes of a large waggon", in Legge's words; the fifth loses its ram in the ease of its place and does not regret it. The top line is the ram stuck in the hedge, unable to go back or forward.
Its pair is 遯, hexagram 33; within it lies 夬, hexagram 43, and every line flipped gives 觀, hexagram 20.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 大壯 when the year, month and day leave 4 on eight, which puts 震 thunder 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 32 恆 Héng, Constancy
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 55 豐 Fēng, Fullness
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 54 歸妹 Guī Mèi, The Younger Sister Weds
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 11 泰 Tài, Flow
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 43 夬 Guài, Breakthrough
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 14 大有 Dà Yǒu, Great Possession
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)
- 乾 strong, untiring below; 震 moving, startling above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- father below, eldest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- head and horse below; feet and dragon above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Metal 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
- Month in the Han calendars (sovereign hexagram)
- The second lunar month (卯), with four yang lines sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down: 33 遯 Dùn, Retreat; every line flipped: 20 觀 Guān, Looking Out sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 34, from 240.125° to 245.75° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Great Power: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 大壯 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Tâ Kwang indicates that (under the conditions which it symbolises) it will be advantageous to be firm and correct.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Thunder above the sky; the superior man takes no step that is not according to propriety.
- The Han calendars (1st century BCE)
- The hexagram of the second lunar month, the month of 卯: yang growing from below.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 震 above when the year, month and day leave 4 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 34 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Thunder in the sky: great power, and the question of how it is used; the ram that butts the hedge gets its horns caught, and power that keeps to what is right goes further.
Claims about it
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Gate 34 of Human Design, at 240.125° to 245.75° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 34.
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 大壯 Dà Zhuàng 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.
