42 · Increase
Gate 42 in Human Design, Gene Key 42, and hexagram 42 of the I Ching, Increase 益: one number, three traditions, read together on this page and kept apart where they differ.
The number, read across the three
Human Design places gate 42 in the Sacral and reads it as growth: the energy to complete a cycle, to see a thing through to its end so that the next can begin. Gene Keys reads it as expectation to detachment, the movement from needing the ending to be a certain way to letting it be what it is. The I Ching calls it increase, wind and thunder that help each other.
The honest shadow is expectation: cycles finished for the sake of the result, an attachment to how things should end, and a difficulty beginning anything that cannot be finished. The tradition says gate 42 with gate 53 is the channel of maturation, and that growth needs the beginning it does not itself supply.
The hexagram
The judgement: It is worth having somewhere to go. It is worth crossing the great water.
The image: Wind and thunder. So the person of worth moves towards what is good on seeing it, and mends a fault on finding one.
The six lines
Line 1. It is worth doing something large. Good fortune from the source. No fault.
Line 2. Someone adds to it. Ten pairs of tortoises cannot go against it. To stay straight for the long run is good fortune. The king makes his offering to the highest god. Good fortune.
Line 3. Added to by way of misfortune. No fault. Hold true and walk down the middle, and report to the prince with a jade token.
Line 4. Walk down the middle and report to the prince, and he follows. It is worth being the one leant on when the capital is moved.
Line 5. Hold true with a kind heart, and do not ask. Good fortune from the source. Holding true, your kindness is taken as your character.
Line 6. You add to nobody. Someone strikes at you. You give your heart no constancy. Misfortune.
In a Human Design chart
Gate 42 sits in the Sacral centre. Its channel partner is gate 53, in the Root centre. When both gates of a channel are activated, one from each end, the channel is defined and both centres with it, which is how the tradition builds a type and an authority. A gate on its own is a hanging gate: a theme without its circuit, and the tradition reads it as a pull towards whoever carries the other half.
Three traditions, one number
The same sixty-four figures, read three ways, and the three do not say the same thing.
Human Design took the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching and mapped them round the zodiac as gates, so that a planet at a degree is a planet in a gate; Gene Keys took the same sixty-four and read each as a spectrum from a shadow to a gift to a siddhi; the I Ching itself reads the figure as a situation, with a judgement, an image and six changing lines. Number 42 is growth in the first, expectation becoming detachment in the second, and Increase in the third. They share a number and a diagram, and they were written for three different purposes, which is why we show all three rather than translating one into the others. The I Ching text on this page is our own English, made from the Chinese with the Wilhelm paragraph as a reading reference, and every passage carries its provenance.
Whether the number is in your chart at all is a Human Design question: the calculator says which gates your planets activate, on the personality side and the design side, and which of them complete a channel.
About 60 seconds · needs your birth time and place · both sides of the chart are drawn
Questions people ask
What does gate 42 mean in Human Design?
Growth, in the Sacral centre. Human Design places gate 42 in the Sacral and reads it as growth: the energy to complete a cycle, to see a thing through to its end so that the next can begin. Whether it is active in your chart depends on where your planets were at birth and about eighty-eight days before it.
What is Gene Key 42?
The same number read as a spectrum: the shadow of expectation, the gift of detachment, the siddhi of celebration. Gene Keys reads the shadow as the starting point and the gift as what it becomes when it is met rather than fought.
Is hexagram 42 the same as gate 42?
The same figure and the same number, read for different purposes: the I Ching reads it as a situation you have cast or are in, Human Design as a fixed activation in a birth chart. A cast hexagram is not a natal gate, and the site keeps the two apart.
We read charts for pattern and coherence, not prediction. Nothing here tells you what will happen, and nothing here tells you who you are; it shows a structure and leaves the judgement with you.