The Book of Changes · Tai

Hexagram 11: Peace

Earth (the field) over Heaven (the sky)

Heaven below and earth above, so the two are moving toward each other rather than apart. This is the figure of things working, and every line in it is about not wasting the season.

The image

Earth over heaven: the meeting. The reading is that whoever is responsible arranges things so the good conditions reach everybody, because unshared prosperity does not last.

Earth, above

Yielding, carrying, and what receives without insisting.

Heaven, below

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

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Pull one reed and the roots bring others. Undertakings gather people.
2. Line 2Putting up with the rough part, making the crossing, and not forgetting the people who are far off.
3. Line 3Every level stretch eventually tilts, and everything that goes out comes back. It turns. Eat well in the meantime.
4. Line 4Fluttering down, not from wealth, and the neighbour comes too. Trust without arrangements.
5. Line 5The sovereign gives his daughter in marriage. Rank set aside for the sake of the thing.
6. Line 6The wall falls back into the moat. Now is not the time for armies.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 11 is Gate 11, Ideas.