The Book of Changes · Jia Ren

Hexagram 37: The Family

Wind (wind, and wood growing) over Fire (flame and the sun)

The household, and the claim underneath it: what a person is inside their own walls is what they will be outside them. Order at home is not a private matter in this reading.

The image

Wind coming out of fire. The reading is that a person's words have substance and their conduct has duration, which is what makes a family hold.

Wind, above

Penetration, patience, and what works by not stopping.

Fire, below

Clarity, attachment, and what depends on its fuel.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Firm limits inside the house from the start. The regret is spared later.
2. Line 2Staying at the centre of the household and keeping it fed. Constancy, in the least glamorous form there is.
3. Line 3Too harsh a tone brings regret and works anyway. Too much laughter and the house loses its shape.
4. Line 4The one who holds the wealth of the house. Great good fortune, and it is administrative.
5. Line 5Coming to your family the way a ruler comes: without fear, and without needing to rule.
6. Line 6Work that commands respect on its own. Good fortune at the end, and the end is the point.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 37 is Gate 37, Friendship.