Gate 42: The Gate of Growth

A surplus wants to go somewhere. This line asks whether it opens up new fields of activity or frays apart. In its exalted expression, you steer the surplus deliberately into new tasks, and from that grows something that wasn't there before. In its weakened expression, the surplus scatters in every direction, and too much expansion can easily tip over into excess.

This line is about how you relate to fashions and change: whether you go along with them or steer clear. In its exalted expression, a keen sense for trends supports growth when you put them to use and help carry them forward. In its weakened expression, you tend to meet progress with withdrawal and doing without rather than with growth.

In times of growth, trying things out is part of the process, and mistakes come along with it. This line shows how you learn from them. In its exalted expression, a mistake counts as part of growth, and with energy and drive it becomes an advantage. In its weakened expression, mistakes darken the mood. You brood over them and proceed more cautiously than you would need to.

This line stands for the role of someone who mediates between the two sides. Is that person shaped by maturity or by the wish for harmony? In its exalted expression, the role is fully embodied: maturity creates balance and so makes room for growth. In its weakened expression, the wish for harmony colors the mediation where clear-headedness and pragmatism would actually be called for.

This line is about self-realization: does it shine outward, or does it stay turned inward? In its exalted expression, you live your purpose as your natural path. In this view, that includes a healthy sense of self and an influence that develops along the way. In its weakened expression, self-realization stays entirely inside you and can strengthen the tendency to withdraw.

This line asks whether you share the fruits of growth. In its exalted expression, you let others take part in your own development as a matter of course and care for them instinctively, without claiming any credit for it. In its weakened expression, a narrow materialism, estranged from itself, keeps others from their share and can feed aggression.

This cross is decisive in the course of development: everyone is meant to master the Maya. That happens by accepting their nature, living according to Type and Authority, and in doing so recognizing how the mechanics around them work, rather than by cramming every fine detail.

With the Sun in Gate 42, what matters is finishing things instead of leaving them hanging. How does something unfold, and where are its beginning, middle and end? This is where the root of science lies. Because Gate 42 wants to bring things to an end, it can hold out for a long time in something that began the wrong way, for example decades in a marriage that doesn't fit. That is why how you enter into things is important, even something like a course of training; Strategy and Authority describe how to do that well.

The Design Earth in Gate 62 anchors the cross in detail: you gather everything together in order to grasp how things work. You overcome the mind by understanding it rather than by switching it off. The Personality Earth in Gate 32 brings the fear of failing: even a crossword puzzle with one blank square can feel like a personal failure.

A Right Angle Cross points to a personal theme: your path belongs to you, and encounters color it without redirecting it. Rather than a claim or a destiny, it is something you live when you follow your Strategy and Authority.

This Juxtaposition Cross is set on completion, whatever it takes. Limitation, the Design Sun in Gate 60, is a fixed part of it.

The drive can also show up in relationships: some people hold on to relationships even though those relationships hurt them, and they suffer a great deal because of it. Its image is the marathon runner who keeps going long after everyone else has gone home.

Others often criticize this drive, which weighs on the people who carry it. It helps to simply let them get on with it, because this cross finishes things that others give up on sooner, for example in research that runs for many years.

Juxtaposition Crosses are rare. Your path here is fixed and your own, a bridge between a personal and a transpersonal theme, much like a train on its tracks. In this view, people who stay with you over a longer stretch can ride along for part of the way. This is not a prediction; the meaning shows itself over the course of your life.

Maya means measuring, and it springs from limitation. Those who carry this Left Angle Cross lead others out to the edges of these limits.

The message goes roughly like this: success comes only to those who accept limitation; everything is illusion, but it is our illusion, and no one gets out of it. The way these people remind others of this can feel confining, much like an outstretched hand that says: this far and no farther.

On the transpersonal level, the task is to recognize what can be brought to completion with another person and what cannot.

A Left Angle Cross is a transpersonal theme that is fulfilled only in connection with others. This path needs people who fit it and help carry it. This is not fate; the meaning of the cross shows itself over the course of your life.