Meaning
The lake lies at the foot of the mountain; one can picture it giving its water to the slope above it. The figure is read the same way: a line has moved from the lower trigram to the upper, the lower giving to the higher. 損 means to reduce or to take away, and the Judgment makes it depend on sincerity: with that there is great good fortune and freedom from error, and it adds that two plain baskets of grain may be used in the offering, since what counts is the feeling and not the quantity.
The Image names what is to be reduced in oneself: anger, which the superior man restrains, and desire, which he represses. In our own reading, 損 is subtraction chosen rather than suffered, the paring away that lets something more important grow. Its pair, hexagram 42, is the same six lines turned over: increase.
The lines
The first line drops its own affairs to help another, and is told to weigh how much it can give. The second gives "without taking from himself", in Legge's words, and is warned against acting. The third holds the hexagram's arithmetic: of three walking together, one is lost; one walking alone finds a friend. The fifth receives a gift of ten pairs of tortoise shells that cannot be refused, and the top line, like the second, increases others without diminishing itself.
Within 損 lies 復, hexagram 24; every line flipped gives 咸, hexagram 31.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 損 when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, which puts 艮 mountain above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 2, which puts 兌 lake 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 4 蒙 Méng, The Untaught Mind
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 27 頤 Yí, Nourishment
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 26 大畜 Dà Xù, Great Restraint
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 38 睽 Kuí, Estrangement
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 61 中孚 Zhōng Fú, Trust at the Centre
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 19 臨 Lín, Drawing Near
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 24 復 Fù, Return. 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)
- 兌 pleased, open below; 艮 stopping, at rest above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- youngest daughter below, youngest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- mouth and sheep 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: 42 益 Yì, Increase; every line flipped: 31 咸 Xián, Mutual Influence sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 41, from 302° to 307.625° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Decrease: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 損 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “In (what is denoted by) Sun, if there be sincerity (in him who employs it), there will be great good fortune …”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- A marsh at the foot of a mountain; the superior man restrains his anger and represses his desires.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 艮 above when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, 兌 below when the same total with the hour leaves 2.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 41 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- The lake at the foot of the mountain: giving up from below to strengthen what is above; done sincerely, a decrease is not a loss, and what is cut back is anger and excess.
Claims about it
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Gate 41 of Human Design, at 302° to 307.625° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 41.
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 損 Sǔn 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.
