Meaning
Two whole lines in the middle, two broken lines on either side: the commentators see a bird, its body and its spread wings. 小過 means going a little beyond, a small excess, and where hexagram 28 is too much weight on weak ends, this is the reverse, too little in the middle. The Judgment allows progress and small undertakings, not great ones, and gives the picture of a flying bird whose cry is heard: it should come down, not climb, and then there is great good fortune.
The Image names the three things in which one may go a little beyond the ordinary: humility in conduct, grief in mourning and thrift in spending. In our own reading, 小過 is a time for doing the small things carefully and keeping one's ambitions near the ground. It is the opposite of 中孚, every line flipped, and also its pair.
The lines
The first line is a bird that keeps climbing until it comes to grief; the second passes by its grandfather to meet its grandmother, and stays within its station. The third takes no extra care against danger and is attacked; the fourth keeps to its course and is warned to be careful going on. The fifth repeats the dense clouds without rain from hexagram 9, and a prince shoots at a bird in a cave. The top line is the bird flown far too high, "self-produced" trouble in Legge's English.
Within 小過 lies 大過, hexagram 28; its pair and opposite is 中孚, hexagram 61.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 小過 when the year, month and day leave 4 on eight, which puts 震 thunder 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 55 豐 Fēng, Fullness
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 32 恆 Héng, Constancy
- Line 3 (九三) moving: becomes 16 豫 Yù, Readiness
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 15 謙 Qiān, Modesty
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 31 咸 Xián, Mutual Influence
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 56 旅 Lǚ, The Traveller
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 28 大過 Dà Guò, Great Excess. 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; 震 moving, startling above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- youngest son below, eldest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- hands and dog below; feet and dragon 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 it is itself; every line flipped: 61 中孚 Zhōng Fú, Trust at the Centre sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 62, from 110.75° to 116.375° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Small Excess: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 小過 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Hsiâo Kwo indicates that (in the circumstances which it implies) there will be progress and attainment.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Thunder above a hill; the superior man exceeds in humility in conduct, in sorrow in mourning and in economy in spending.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 震 above when the year, month and day leave 4 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 62 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Thunder on the mountain: a time for small things done with a little extra care; the bird should keep low, and aiming at the great is out of season.
Claims about it
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Gate 62 of Human Design, at 110.75° to 116.375° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 62.
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 小過 Xiǎo Guò 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.
