Meaning
Strong heaven below, dangerous water above: the strength is there, but it faces something it cannot rush. 需 means to wait, and in other places to need or to be provided for, and the tradition keeps both senses in view. The Judgment is warm: with sincerity there is brilliant success, firmness brings good fortune, and it is even favourable "to cross the great stream", the book's stock phrase for a large undertaking.
The Image is the hexagram's surprise. The clouds have climbed into the sky, and the superior man eats and drinks and takes his ease. Waiting here is not anxiety but confidence: the rain comes in its own time, and the right thing to do meanwhile is to keep oneself fed and steady. In our own reading the danger the hexagram warns of is forcing an hour that has not arrived.
The lines
The lines place the waiting at different distances from the water. The first waits at the far border and is told to keep to it; the second waits on the sand by the stream and suffers some gossip; the third waits in the mud, and so "invites the approach of injury", in Legge's words. The fourth waits in a place of blood but comes out of the cave; the fifth waits among wine and food, which the commentators read as the right kind of waiting. At the top the subject has gone into the cave, and three guests arrive unasked; received with respect, they bring a good end.
Its pair, 訟, hexagram 6, is the same figure upside down: patience in one, a quarrel in the other. Within 需 lies 睽, hexagram 38.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 需 when the year, month and day leave 6 on eight, which puts 坎 water 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 48 井 Jǐng, The Well
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 63 既濟 Jì Jì, Already Across
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 60 節 Jié, Measure
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 43 夬 Guài, Breakthrough
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 11 泰 Tài, Flow
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 9 小畜 Xiǎo Xù, Small Restraint
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)
- 乾 strong, untiring below; 坎 sinking, perilous above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- father below, middle son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- head and horse below; ears and pig above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Metal 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: 6 訟 Sòng, Dispute; every line flipped: 35 晉 Jìn, Advance sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 5, from 251.375° to 257° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Waiting: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 需 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “With firmness there will be good fortune; and it will be advantageous to cross the great stream.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Clouds rising to the sky; the superior man eats, drinks and is at ease while he waits.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 坎 above when the year, month and day leave 6 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 5 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Clouds rising into the sky before the rain: something is on its way, and the text says to eat, rest and keep good cheer meanwhile, and to welcome guests who arrive unasked.
Claims about it
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Gate 5 of Human Design, at 251.375° to 257° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 5.
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 需 Xū 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.
