Meaning
A tree on a mountain grows slowly and holds its place for a long time. That is the picture of 漸, gradual progress that does not skip a stage. The Judgment takes a marriage as its example, since a proper marriage moved through its rites one by one, and promises good fortune with firmness. Every line from the second to the fifth stands in its proper place, which the commentators read as order kept at each step.
The Image draws from the tree on the hill the slow improvement of character and of a people's customs. In our own reading, 漸 values the order of steps for its own sake: what is reached in its own time stands. The geese of the line texts make the same point by flying, one stage at a time.
The lines
The geese move up through the landscape. First they come to the shore, and a young officer is in danger and talked about, without fault; then to the great rocks, where they eat and drink at ease. They reach the dry plain, a hard place for them; the trees, where they find a flat branch to stand on; the high mound, where what was delayed comes right in the end. At the top they reach the heights, and their feathers "can be used as ornaments", in Legge's English, in the dances of the rite.
Its pair 歸妹, hexagram 54, is both its inverse and its opposite; within 漸 lies 未濟, hexagram 64. 漸 is the birth hexagram of the second of our three sample people.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 漸 when the year, month and day leave 5 on eight, which puts 巽 wind above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 7, which puts 艮 mountain 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 37 家人 Jiā Rén, The Household
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 57 巽 Xùn, Entering Wind
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 20 觀 Guān, Looking Out
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 33 遯 Dùn, Retreat
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 52 艮 Gèn, Stopping
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 39 蹇 Jiǎn, Obstruction
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)
- 艮 stopping, at rest below; 巽 entering, pervading above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- youngest son below, eldest daughter above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- hands and dog below; thighs and fowl above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Earth 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: 54 歸妹 Guī Mèi, The Younger Sister Weds; every line flipped: 54 歸妹 Guī Mèi, The Younger Sister Weds sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 53, from 105.125° to 110.75° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Step by Step: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 漸 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Kien suggests to us the marriage of a young lady, and the good fortune (attending it). There will be advantage in being firm and correct.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- A tree on a mountain; the superior man attains to extraordinary virtue and makes the manners of the people good.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 巽 above when the year, month and day leave 5 on eight, 艮 below when the same total with the hour leaves 7.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 53 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- A tree growing on the mountain: progress made stage by stage, like wild geese moving from shore to rock to tree; haste would undo it, and the slow way gives it standing.
Claims about it
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Gate 53 of Human Design, at 105.125° to 110.75° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 53.
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 漸 Jiàn 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.
