Meaning
Wind passes over water and the surface breaks into ripples: the picture of 渙, dispersal. The tradition reads it both ways, as something to be undone, the scattering of a people, and as something to be welcomed, the breaking up of what has hardened between them, as spring wind breaks the ice. The Judgment promises success, sends the king to the ancestral temple, and allows the great crossing: dispersal is answered by what people hold in common.
The Image says the same in history: the early kings, facing dispersion, made offerings and built the temples. Water is the middle son and wind the eldest daughter, and the one whole line at the centre of each trigram is read as what holds the scattered together: the king's place in the fifth line, the steady helper in the second. In our own reading, 渙 is about loosening what has frozen and gathering again round something shared, so that what is scattered does not stay scattered.
The lines
The first line comes to the rescue with a strong horse; the second hurries to its support and regret disappears; the third disperses its own self-regard. The fourth breaks up factions and gathers people again "like a mound", in Legge's English, which ordinary people would not have thought of. The fifth issues its great announcement as freely as sweat flows. The top line puts trouble and fear far away from itself, and is blameless.
Its pair is 節, hexagram 60, the same figure upside down; within 渙 lies 頤, hexagram 27, and every line flipped gives 豐, hexagram 55.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 渙 when the year, month and day leave 5 on eight, which puts 巽 wind above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 6, which puts 坎 water 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 61 中孚 Zhōng Fú, Trust at the Centre
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 20 觀 Guān, Looking Out
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 57 巽 Xùn, Entering Wind
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 6 訟 Sòng, Dispute
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 4 蒙 Méng, The Untaught Mind
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 29 坎 Kǎn, The Abyss
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 27 頤 Yí, Nourishment. 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)
- 坎 sinking, perilous below; 巽 entering, pervading above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- middle son below, eldest daughter above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- ears and pig below; thighs and fowl above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Water 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: 60 節 Jié, Measure; every line flipped: 55 豐 Fēng, Fullness sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 59, from 150.125° to 155.75° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Scattering: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 渙 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Hwân intimates that (under its conditions) there will be progress and success. The king goes to his ancestral temple”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Wind moving above water; the ancient kings presented offerings to God and established the ancestral temple.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 巽 above when the year, month and day leave 5 on eight, 坎 below when the same total with the hour leaves 6.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 59 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Wind moving over water: what has frozen hard is loosened and spread, and something shared and sacred gathers the scattered again.
Claims about it
-
Gate 59 of Human Design, at 150.125° to 155.75° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 59.
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 渙 Huàn 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.
