Meaning
Fire is inside, wind outside: the trigrams draw a house with a hearth, and the warmth going out from it. 家人 means the people of the household, and the figure is read through its two central lines: a broken line in the second place, the centre of the lower trigram, and a whole line in the fifth, the centre of the upper, each where its kind belongs. The commentators read them as the wife and the husband in their roles. The Judgment, in the household language of its time, says that what matters most is that the wife be firm and correct.
The Image reads wind coming out of fire as influence that starts at home: the superior man's words have substance and his conduct stays the same, and that is what reaches beyond the door. In our own reading, the hexagram describes an order of roles kept with consistency; the roles it names belong to the society that wrote it, and we report them as the text's.
The lines
The first line sets the rules of the house at the start, and regret disappears; the second takes nothing on itself and sees to the food at the centre of the house. The third is severe, and the text weighs severity against laxity and prefers it, with some regret; the fourth enriches the household. The fifth is the king's influence reaching his family, "no anxiety", in Legge's English; the top line is sincere and dignified, and all ends well.
Within 家人 lies 未濟, hexagram 64; its pair is 睽, hexagram 38, the household coming apart, and every line flipped gives 解, hexagram 40.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 家人 when the year, month and day leave 5 on eight, which puts 巽 wind above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 3, which puts 離 fire 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 53 漸 Jiàn, Step by Step
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 9 小畜 Xiǎo Xù, Small Restraint
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 42 益 Yì, Increase
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 13 同人 Tóng Rén, Fellowship
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 22 賁 Bì, Adornment
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 63 既濟 Jì Jì, Already Across
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 64 未濟 Wèi Jì, Not Yet Across. 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)
- 離 bright, attached below; 巽 entering, pervading above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- middle daughter below, eldest daughter above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- eyes and pheasant below; thighs and fowl above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Fire 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: 38 睽 Kuí, Estrangement; every line flipped: 40 解 Xiè, Release sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 37, from 335.75° to 341.375° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- The Household: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 家人 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “… most advantageous is that the wife be firm and correct.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Wind coming forth from fire; the superior man orders his words according to the truth of things and keeps his conduct consistent.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 巽 above when the year, month and day leave 5 on eight, 離 below when the same total with the hour leaves 3.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 37 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Wind coming out of fire: the household, held together by the roles within it; words with substance and conduct that does not change keep the inner order, and the outer follows.
Claims about it
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Gate 37 of Human Design, at 335.75° to 341.375° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 37.
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 家人 Jiā Rén 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.
