The Book of Changes · Shi

Hexagram 7: The Army

Earth (the field) over Water (the gorge and the deep)

Organised force, and every warning in it is about who leads. Discipline without a person answerable for it becomes a mob, which the tradition treats as worse than losing.

The image

Water inside the earth: strength held out of sight. The reading is that a leader keeps people the way ground keeps water, by holding rather than by driving.

Earth, above

Yielding, carrying, and what receives without insisting.

Water, below

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

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1The army sets out in order. Without order at the start, nothing later fixes it.
2. Line 2In the middle of the force, and trusted. Recognition follows from being there.
3. Line 3Carrying corpses in the wagon. Somebody unfit is in charge.
4. Line 4The army retreats and camps. Withdrawing in order is not defeat.
5. Line 5Deal with what is actually in the field. Choose who acts by fitness, not by seniority.
6. Line 6The work is done; now the rewards. Do not put small people in large positions.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 7 is Gate 7, The Role of the Self.