Meaning
The character 井 is a drawing of a well with its frame, and the trigrams put wood beneath water, the bucket going down and coming up full. The Judgment is the book's fullest description of a single thing. Towns move; the well does not. It is neither used up nor increased; people come and go and draw from it. And if the rope is too short, or the jar breaks before it reaches the top, the water is of no use.
The Image draws a lesson about a community round its source: the superior man encourages people and urges them to help one another. In our own reading, 井 is what stays the same and serves everyone, and its warning is about access: a good source is worth nothing if no one can reach it. It is the pair of 困, the dry lake, turned over.
The lines
The lines follow a well from neglect to use. At the bottom it is so muddy that no one drinks and no birds come; in the second place it leaks away to the small fish, or the jar is broken. The third has been cleared and is not used, and the text says its heart is sorry, since the water could be drawn; the fourth is a well whose lining has been laid. The fifth is "a clear, limpid well", in Legge's words, whose cold spring is drunk. At the top the water is drawn up and the well is not covered.
Within 井 lies 睽, hexagram 38; its pair is 困, hexagram 47, and every line flipped gives 噬嗑, hexagram 21.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 井 when the year, month and day leave 6 on eight, which puts 坎 water 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 5 需 Xū, Waiting
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 39 蹇 Jiǎn, Obstruction
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 29 坎 Kǎn, The Abyss
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 28 大過 Dà Guò, Great Excess
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 46 升 Shēng, Ascent
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 57 巽 Xùn, Entering Wind
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 38 睽 Kuí, Estrangement. 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; 坎 sinking, perilous above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- eldest daughter below, middle son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- thighs and fowl below; ears and pig above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Wood below, Water 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: 47 困 Kùn, Confinement; every line flipped: 21 噬嗑 Shì Kè, Closing the Jaws sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 48, from 189.5° to 195.125° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- The Well: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 井 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “(Looking at) Zing, (we think of) how (the site of) a town may be changed …”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Wood below water; the superior man comforts the people and stimulates them to help one another.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 坎 above when the year, month and day leave 6 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 48 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Wood below water, the bucket in the well: a source that stays in place while everything around it changes, and serves everyone who comes, if the rope reaches.
Claims about it
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Gate 48 of Human Design, at 189.5° to 195.125° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 48.
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.
-
Being born under 井 Jǐng 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.
