The Book of Changes · Cui

Hexagram 45: Gathering Together

Lake (still water held in a hollow) over Earth (the field)

People collecting around a centre, and the tradition puts two things at the centre: a person answerable for it, and something larger than any of them that they are gathered around.

The image

The lake over the earth. The reading is that a person keeps their weapons in repair to meet the unforeseen, because a gathering is exactly where the unforeseen arrives.

Lake, above

Openness, pleasure, and what is said out loud.

Earth, below

Yielding, carrying, and what receives without insisting.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Sincere, and not to the end. Confusion first, then the gathering. Call out and it turns.
2. Line 2Letting yourself be drawn. Even a small offering is enough here.
3. Line 3Gathering amid sighs. Nothing here works. Going is not a fault, and it is slightly humiliating.
4. Line 4Great good fortune, and no fault. It arrives, and it is not yours by right.
5. Line 5A position in it, and some are not convinced yet. Steady constancy, and the regret lifts.
6. Line 6Lamenting, and streams of tears. No fault: the grief belongs to the gathering.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 45 is Gate 45, The Gatherer.