Meaning
The trigrams set the youngest daughter, the lake, beneath the eldest son, thunder: the glad following the moving. The name 歸妹 means a younger sister going to her husband's house, in the old custom as a secondary wife who accompanied the bride, and the tradition reads the hexagram as a relationship entered on unequal or irregular terms. Our title for it is a translation of the name, chosen in place of the better-known English one, which belongs to a translation in copyright. The Judgment says simply that action goes badly and nothing is gained.
The Image draws the lesson that lasts beyond the custom: by looking to the end of a matter, the superior man knows the trouble that may lie in its beginning. Legge sets out the commentators' reasons for the bleak verdict: a marriage begun from the wrong side, and a match unequal in age. In our own reading, the hexagram is about seeing clearly what one is entering, and on what terms.
The lines
The lines are images of the sister's position. The first goes as an attendant, like a lame person who can still walk; the second is like someone with one eye who can still see. The third goes in a low place and returns to accept an attendant's role; the fourth delays, and its time comes. The fifth remembers a king's sister whose sleeves were plainer than her attendant's, modesty that is called fortunate. The top line is a young woman "bearing the basket, but without anything in it", in Legge's English.
Within 歸妹 lies 既濟, hexagram 63; its pair 漸, hexagram 53, is both its inverse and its opposite.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 歸妹 when the year, month and day leave 4 on eight, which puts 震 thunder 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 40 解 Xiè, Release
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 51 震 Zhèn, Shock
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 34 大壯 Dà Zhuàng, Great Power
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 19 臨 Lín, Drawing Near
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 58 兌 Duì, Openness
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 38 睽 Kuí, Estrangement
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 63 既濟 Jì Jì, Already 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)
- 兌 pleased, open below; 震 moving, startling above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- youngest daughter below, eldest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- mouth and sheep below; feet and dragon above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Metal 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: 53 漸 Jiàn, Step by Step; every line flipped: 53 漸 Jiàn, Step by Step sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 54, from 285.125° to 290.75° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- The Younger Sister Weds: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 歸妹 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Kwei Mei indicates that (under the conditions which it denotes) action will be evil, and in no wise advantageous.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Thunder over a marsh; the superior man, looking to the far end of things, knows the mischief that may lie in a beginning.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 震 above when the year, month and day leave 4 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 54 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Thunder over the lake: entering a situation in a lesser place, as a younger sister joins a household; see in the beginning how a thing may end, and do not press.
Claims about it
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Gate 54 of Human Design, at 285.125° to 290.75° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 54.
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 歸妹 Guī Mèi 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.
