Meaning
The sun clears the horizon and the land is lit: that is 晉, advance, in its simplest picture. The one broken line in the fifth place, the ruler's seat, is read as a mild ruler who lets the able come forward, and the Judgment tells a story of exactly that: a prince who has kept the people at peace is given many horses and received at court three times in one day.
The Image draws from the rising sun the duty of making one's own clarity brighter. In our own reading, 晉 is advance that is visible and welcomed, progress that depends as much on how it is received as on effort. Its pair, hexagram 36, is the same sun gone down under the earth.
The lines
The lines advance with mixed fortunes. The first wants to go forward and is held back, and is told to keep a generous mind if it is not trusted; the second advances sorrowfully and receives a great blessing from its grandmother, the ruler in the fifth place, as the commentators read it. The third is trusted by everyone around it; the fourth advances "like a marmot", in Legge's English, grasping and exposed. The fifth is told not to worry about failure or success. The top line advances its horns only against its own city, and the text warns it.
Within 晉 lies 蹇, hexagram 39, and every line flipped gives 需, hexagram 5.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 晉 when the year, month and day leave 3 on eight, which puts 離 fire above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 0, counted as 8, which puts 坤 earth 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 21 噬嗑 Shì Kè, Closing the Jaws
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 64 未濟 Wèi Jì, Not Yet Across
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 56 旅 Lǚ, The Traveller
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 23 剝 Bō, Stripping Away
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 12 否 Pǐ, Blockage
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 16 豫 Yù, Readiness
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 39 蹇 Jiǎn, Obstruction. 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)
- 坤 yielding, compliant below; 離 bright, attached above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- mother below, middle daughter above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- belly and ox below; eyes and pheasant above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Earth below, Fire 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: 36 明夷 Míng Yí, Brightness Wounded; every line flipped: 5 需 Xū, Waiting sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 35, from 71.375° to 77° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Advance: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 晉 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “(We see) a prince who secures the tranquillity (of the people) presented on that account with numerous horses (by the king), and three times in a day received at interviews.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- The bright sun coming forth above the earth; the superior man makes his bright virtue more brilliant.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 離 above when the year, month and day leave 3 on eight, 坤 below when the same total with the hour leaves 0.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 35 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- The sun rising over the earth: a clear advance, received and welcomed from above, with good qualities allowed to show and no counting of what is lost or gained.
Claims about it
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Gate 35 of Human Design, at 71.375° to 77° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 35.
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 晉 Jìn 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.
