Meaning
Look at the lines: whole at the edges and empty in the middle, like a heart kept open. 中 is the centre and 孚 trust, good faith, the sincerity that others can feel, and our title translates the two characters as they stand. The Judgment says that this trust moves even pigs and fish, the least responsive creatures there are, and that it brings good fortune and allows the great crossing.
The Image draws from the wind over the lake a lesson for those who judge others: they weigh each case with care and are slow to pass the gravest sentence. In our own reading, 中孚 is trust that needs no words to be felt, and the line texts warn about words that run ahead of it. Its pair is 小過, hexagram 62, which is also its opposite.
The lines
The first line rests in itself and finds peace there. The second holds the oldest poem in the book: a crane calls in the shade and her young answer; "I have a cup of good spirits", and the reply, in Legge's English, "I will partake of it with you". The third has met its mate and drums and stops, weeps and sings; the fourth is the moon nearly full, a horse whose partner has gone. The fifth binds others to itself by complete sincerity. The top line is a cock trying to fly to heaven, sound rising beyond what is behind it.
Within 中孚 lies 頤, hexagram 27; its pair and opposite is 小過, hexagram 62.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 中孚 when the year, month and day leave 5 on eight, which puts 巽 wind 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 59 渙 Huàn, Scattering
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 42 益 Yì, Increase
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 9 小畜 Xiǎo Xù, Small Restraint
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 10 履 Lǚ, Treading
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 41 損 Sǔn, Decrease
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 60 節 Jié, Measure
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; 巽 entering, pervading above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- youngest daughter below, eldest daughter above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- mouth and sheep below; thighs and fowl 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 it is itself; every line flipped: 62 小過 Xiǎo Guò, Small Excess sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 61, from 290.75° to 296.375° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Trust at the Centre: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 中孚 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Kung Fû (moves even) pigs and fish, and leads to good fortune.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Wind above a marsh; the superior man deliberates about cases of litigation and delays the infliction of death.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 巽 above when the year, month and day leave 5 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 61 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Wind over the lake: trust at the centre, reaching even pigs and fishes; a crane calls in the shade and its young answers, and words that outrun the trust behind them ring hollow.
Claims about it
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Gate 61 of Human Design, at 290.75° to 296.375° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 61.
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 中孚 Zhōng Fú 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.
