The Book of Changes · Xu

Hexagram 5: Waiting

Water (the gorge and the deep) over Heaven (the sky)

Not passivity. This is waiting with the outcome already decided and only the timing outstanding, which is a different thing from hoping. Danger is ahead and there is nothing to gain by arriving early.

The image

Clouds rise and the rain has not come. The reading is that a person eats, drinks and keeps their strength up, because the waiting is the work.

Water, above

Danger, depth, and what has to be gone through.

Heaven, below

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

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Waiting on open ground, far from it. Keep to what you normally do.
2. Line 2Waiting on sand. Talk starts here. It is noise and it passes.
3. Line 3Waiting in the mud, and you moved too close. Now care is the only option.
4. Line 4Waiting in blood. Out of your depth; get out rather than manage it.
5. Line 5Waiting at the table. A real pause, and it is allowed to be pleasant.
6. Line 6Uninvited guests arrive. Meeting them well turns the ending.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 5 is Gate 5, Fixed Rhythms.