Meaning
A lake can hold only so much; when the water rises past its banks, it runs away. 節 is the joint of a bamboo, the ring that divides the stem into sections and gives it its strength, and from there a measure, a rule, a limit, and also restraint in oneself. The Judgment promises progress and then states the condition that makes limits work: if the regulations are severe and hard to keep, they cannot last.
The Image draws a civic lesson: the superior man fixes standards of number and measure and discusses virtue and conduct in their light. In our own reading, 節 is about limits that give things shape rather than strangle them, and the line texts distinguish the measure that is sweet from the one that is bitter.
The lines
The first line does not leave the courtyard outside its door, and is blameless; the second does not leave the courtyard inside its gate, and misses its moment. The third keeps no measure and laments, with no one to blame but itself; the fourth keeps measure quietly and naturally. The fifth is measure "sweetly and acceptably" kept, in Legge's English, which wins admiration. The top line is measure made bitter, harsh and difficult, and regret follows.
Its pair is 渙, hexagram 59; within 節 lies 頤, hexagram 27, and every line flipped gives 旅, hexagram 56.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 節 when the year, month and day leave 6 on eight, which puts 坎 water 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 29 坎 Kǎn, The Abyss
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 3 屯 Zhūn, First Shoots
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 5 需 Xū, Waiting
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 58 兌 Duì, Openness
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 19 臨 Lín, Drawing Near
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 61 中孚 Zhōng Fú, Trust at the Centre
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)
- 兌 pleased, open below; 坎 sinking, perilous above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- youngest daughter below, middle son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- mouth and sheep 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: 59 渙 Huàn, Scattering; every line flipped: 56 旅 Lǚ, The Traveller sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 60, from 296.375° to 302° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Measure: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 節 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “(But) if the regulations (which it prescribes) be severe and difficult, they cannot be permanent.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- A lake with water above it; the superior man constructs his measures of number and length and discusses virtue and conduct.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 坎 above when the year, month and day leave 6 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 60 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Water over the lake: limits that give form, like the joints of bamboo, set so that they can be kept, since measures that are too harsh will not be.
Claims about it
-
Gate 60 of Human Design, at 296.375° to 302° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 60.
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 節 Jié 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.
