The Book of Changes · Yi

Hexagram 27: Nourishment

Mountain (the peak) over Thunder (the storm arriving)

The open mouth, and what goes into it. The tradition reads it two ways at once and means both: what a person eats, and what they take in as attention, company and language.

The image

Thunder at the foot of the mountain. The reading is that a person is careful with their words and moderate in what they consume, since both are the same act.

Mountain, above

Stillness, limit, and the place where a thing stops.

Thunder, below

Shock, beginning, and movement that starts below.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Setting down what feeds you to watch someone else eat. Envy, and it costs you what you had.
2. Line 2Turning off the path to be fed from higher up. Going on this way does not end well.
3. Line 3Turning away from what actually feeds you. Ten years of nothing coming of it.
4. Line 4Hungry, and honest about it, and looking about with sharp eyes. That is allowed here.
5. Line 5Off the path, and staying put. Not the season for a big crossing.
6. Line 6Being the source others are fed from. Knowing how dangerous that is is what makes it work.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 27 is Gate 27, Caring.