The Book of Changes · Qian

Hexagram 1: The Creative

Heaven (the sky) over Heaven (the sky)

Pure initiative, and the only hexagram with nothing in it to soften the impulse. It is the strength that begins things, which is also the strength that does not know when to stop.

The image

Heaven doubled: motion that never tires. The old reading is that a person keeps themselves in order the way the sky does, by continuing rather than by forcing.

Heaven, above

Force, and the initiative that does not wait to be asked.

Heaven, below

Force, and the initiative that does not wait to be asked.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1The energy is real and the moment is not here yet. Nothing is lost by waiting.
2. Line 2You have been seen. Being visible changes what is possible and what is expected.
3. Line 3Working all day and uneasy at night. Effort at the edge of what you can sustain.
4. Line 4A choice between rising and staying. Either is correct; being unable to choose is not.
5. Line 5In the open, doing the thing well, and it is recognised. The good position, plainly.
6. Line 6Too high. Force with nothing left to push against turns on the person using it.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 1 is Gate 1, Self-Expression.