Meaning
The figure draws its own name. The broken line at the bottom is the cauldron's legs, the three whole lines above it its body, the broken fifth line its ears, and the whole line at the top the rod that passes through them. 鼎 is the bronze tripod in which food was cooked and offered, and the trigrams give the same picture, wood beneath and fire above. The Judgment is a bare promise of great progress, one of the shortest in the book.
The Image draws a lesson about position: the superior man keeps every place correct and so holds firm to what heaven has appointed, as a vessel on three legs stands only if each is set true. In our own reading, 鼎 is transformation that serves others, raw turned to cooked and shared, and the steadiness that new order needs. It follows 革, change, as its pair: once the old is changed, the new is established. Jung drew this hexagram first, in 1949, when he asked the oracle about its introduction to the West.
The lines
The first line is the cauldron overturned, feet in the air, which clears out what was stale; the second is full, and its enemy cannot reach it. The third has its ears out of place, so it cannot be carried, and the pheasant fat inside goes uneaten until rain comes; the fourth has a broken leg, and the ruler's meal is spilt. The fifth has yellow ears and rings of metal, and the top line "rings of jade", in Legge's words, with great good fortune.
Its pair is 革, hexagram 49; within 鼎 lies 夬, hexagram 43, and every line flipped gives 屯, hexagram 3.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 鼎 when the year, month and day leave 3 on eight, which puts 離 fire 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 14 大有 Dà Yǒu, Great Possession
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 56 旅 Lǚ, The Traveller
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 64 未濟 Wèi Jì, Not Yet Across
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 18 蠱 Gǔ, Repairing Decay
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 44 姤 Gòu, Encounter
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 32 恆 Héng, Constancy
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 43 夬 Guài, Breakthrough. 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; 離 bright, attached above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- eldest daughter below, middle daughter above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- thighs and fowl below; eyes and pheasant above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Wood 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: 49 革 Gé, Changing the Hide; every line flipped: 3 屯 Zhūn, First Shoots sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 50, from 206.375° to 212° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- The Cauldron: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 鼎 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Ting gives the intimation of great progress and success.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Fire above wood; the superior man keeps his every position correct and secures the appointment of Heaven.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 離 above when the year, month and day leave 3 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 50 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Fire over wood, the cooking vessel: raw things turned into food to share and to offer; culture and the right place, as steady as a cauldron on its legs.
Claims about it
-
Gate 50 of Human Design, at 206.375° to 212° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 50.
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 鼎 Dǐng 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.
-
When Jung drew hexagram 50 in 1949, synchronicity showed the oracle answering him.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: Jung tells the cast in his foreword and frames it in his idea of synchronicity, a hypothesis he offered in place of causality. No test of it exists.
