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I-Ching Hexagram · 家人 · Jiā Rén
37. The Family
Order the household first — the world follows. Each role held well becomes a foundation.
Keywords
Home · Roles · Inner order
The field
Wind moves out from fire — the heat at the center of a household reaches the rooms beyond it. The hexagram is about the architecture of your closest circle, blood family or the people you live with as one. Each role held with care becomes a small structural beam. The one who provides provides honestly. The one who tends tends without resentment. The one who is tended receives without entitlement. Wilhelm is precise here, and the precision is not about hierarchy. It is about clarity. When you know what you are inside this circle, the circle stops asking you to be everything. Order at home is not control. It is the agreement that lets each person be a person rather than a role they perform under pressure.
Stance
Tend the smallest things. Whose turn it is to cook, who answers the door, when you eat together, what is allowed at the table. These look minor and they hold the whole house up. Speak roles plainly with the people you live with — assumed roles breed resentment faster than disliked ones. Begin the repair from your own corner.
Shadow
The shadow is the role that has eaten the person. The mother who is only mother, the provider who is only provider, the child who is only child long past their childhood. Or the household run as performance — the right photos, the wrong air. Watch for the home that looks orderly and feels cold. That is order without breath inside it.
Changing lines
When lines move, the household opens to the wider world. What you have ordered well at home becomes a kind of offering — friends arrive, projects find a base here, the way you live becomes contagious in the good sense. Keep the inner agreements as the circle widens. The new guests will only stay well in a house that already breathes.
Line pattern
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