yang · rén — tetragrams 19–27 — 13 March to 22 April
Now there are other people in it.
The second line is twice-broken: the human line, standing between heaven and earth. This is the first province in which man holds the province position, and the content follows exactly — following, law, contention, work, office. Readings here rarely concern you alone. Something you want has become a matter of what others will do, what is owed, and who decides.
The spring equinox falls early in this province, at Progress, and the season carries through clear-and-bright to the grain rain. The yang leaps in the abyss, the marsh, the field, on the peak, and things stand on tiptoe to follow it. They come out in throngs. Warmth loosens what was piled up and the withered husks split. The strong breath holds off the massed yin, pushes it back, then wounds and shears until things come level. Then gladness — and immediately after it, litigation, each party following its own due. The province closes in labour: hearts gathered into work, each office made plain, each thing spending its own strength.
When a figure comes up here, ask first who else is in the reading. The Mystery is not describing your intention in this province; it is describing an arrangement between you and someone whose intentions you have been guessing at. A favourable appraisal means the arrangement holds, not that you were right. This is also the first province to run the whole five-phase cycle — water, fire, wood, metal, earth, then water, fire, wood, metal — and every province after it does the same. Take the phase before you take the appraisal. It tells you what medium the thing is working in, and the same true counsel is useless in the wrong one.