← Encyclopedia of Embodied Energy · lesson 147/164
Line
A line is one of the six divisions of every gate on the gate wheel. Since each gate is a hexagram of the I Ching, and a hexagram is six stacked lines, the wheel simply divides each gate into six equal parts and numbers them 1 to 6. Every activation in a chart therefore falls on a particular line as well as a particular gate, and is written as a pair: "Mars 51.4" is Mars in gate 51, line 4.
Where a gate gives a theme, the line is read as the manner in which that theme is lived.
The arithmetic
A gate is 5°37′30″ wide, so a line is a sixth of that: 0°56′15″, a little under a degree. Lines run in the zodiac's own direction through each gate, and the count starts again at 1 in the next gate. That makes the line a fine measure. The Sun crosses a line in just under a day, the Moon in less than two hours. Near an edge, a Sun line can change with a birth time a few hours out, and a Moon line with one only minutes out. The line is the last division we treat as reliable on an ordinary birth time; below it come colour, tone and base, which need a time known much more precisely.
Bottom to top
In the I Ching a hexagram is built from the bottom up: line 1 is the lowest, line 6 the top. It is also two trigrams, a lower one (lines 1–3) and an upper one (lines 4–6). The tradition the chart follows keeps that shape and gives it a meaning:
- lines 1, 2 and 3, the lower trigram, are read as more personal and inward — the foundation, the natural knack, the trial and error;
- lines 4, 5 and 6, the upper trigram, are read as more about other people — the network, the projections of others, the example.
It also pairs the lines across the two halves, 1 with 4, 2 with 5, 3 with 6, each pair sharing a likeness of sort: the foundation and the network built on it, the natural knack and the expectation others place on it, the trial and the example drawn from trial.
The six, in our words
- Line 1 — the one who needs solid ground: goes to the bottom of things before feeling safe.
- Line 2 — the natural left alone: a knack that works best unwatched.
- Line 3 — the one who finds out by trying: what doesn't work is the method, not the failure.
- Line 4 — the one who moves through people: the next thing comes from someone already known.
- Line 5 — the one others project onto: expected to have the answer, often before being asked.
- Line 6 — the one who becomes the example: a life lived in chapters.
These descriptions are ours. The tradition has its own names and texts for the lines, and the I Ching its own line texts for each of the 384 lines of the book; we use neither.
How a line is read in a gate
A line on its own says the same thing in all sixty-four gates, which is why read alone it can sound like a horoscope generality. What gives it meaning is the gate it falls in. So we compose the two: a line 3 in a gate about ordering new beginnings is a person who finds the right order by trying several; a line 1 in the same gate is one who studies the order before beginning. Six descriptions, each applied to sixty-four themes, give 384 distinct readings without any of them being copied from anywhere.
Lines in the profile
The most important lines in a chart are those of the two Suns. The line of the aware Sun over the line of the built-in Sun is the chart's profile, such as 1/3 or 4/6, and it is read as the overall manner of the whole life rather than of one gate.
In your chart
The activation table writes every position as gate.line. A reading of the planets and gates names the line beside each gate and says what it adds there. The profile is given near the start of a reading, with both of its lines described in the gates they fall in.