Gate 45: The Gate of the Gatherer

This line is about winning people over to your side: do you persuade by explaining, or do you scare people off with too much zeal? In its exalted expression, the community grows through education, and you win over the undecided by informing them rather than pressuring them. In its weakened expression, courting support can easily turn into zealous preaching.

A community gains when shared interests are recognized. That is the heart of this line. In its exalted expression, you find resourceful ways to discover what connects the people involved, and you use it for the good of others. In its weakened expression, an inborn rebellion resists fitting in and rejects the proven ways of others, even where they would help.

Being left out can stir a longing to belong, or it can breed frustration. This line shows both. In its exalted expression, an instinct for belonging finds a way in despite being excluded, clearing away what has outlived its use to get there and, if need be, even accepting humiliation. In its weakened expression, anger at being shut out erupts as force and aggression.

Which direction does a community take: toward higher principles, or toward its own advantage? In its exalted expression, the chance to bring people together serves higher principles, and those principles also show up in material terms. In its weakened expression, the shared direction is meant above all to serve personal gain, and higher principles do not show up in material terms.

Every group has a core it gathers around. This line is about that core. In its exalted expression, the line stands for leadership in material matters as well: resourcefulness and a sharp mind strengthen the group, and respect for its core gives it stability. In its weakened expression, there is a demand for leadership and respect that may not yet have been earned.

Someone who was shut out can be taken in once they recognize that their earlier rejection was a mistake. In its exalted expression, you naturally understand outsiders and their unconventional, often misunderstood logic, and you also adjust the material course to fit them. In its weakened expression, the material course is meant to push the outsider into conforming.

All variations of this cross stand for a natural rulership that comes to you rather than one you seize. A ruler's most important duty, it is said, is to educate the people they rule. In the teaching, this cross creates karma because it is a Right Angle Cross: whoever sets bad rules has to deal with their consequences later.

With the Sun in Gate 45, government in the true sense begins. Unlike the gentle, listening version found in Gate 22, this is about real rulership; people shaped this way come to take power. Part of the theme is that territory and influence are offered to them on many levels, which does not necessarily mean running a country. It is the most possessive of all crosses, because its voice lays claim to land, things and people.

Since elected leadership is what counts today and royal families serve more as entertainment, this force finds its place in executive suites, where companies become the new principalities. This rulership is thoroughly material: individuals and society alike are meant to own more than they need. It stands at the origin of trade, whose bookkeeping gave rise to writing.

As a Right Angle Cross, it stands for a purpose that concerns your own path. Other people enrich it, but they don't fundamentally redirect it. You grow into it by following your Strategy and Authority; it is not fate.

If Gate 22 and its grace were missing, rulership would be nothing more than a claim of ownership. That is exactly the case here, and what matters is possessing people rather than ruling them.

These are people who cling and won't let go in order to secure their position and territory, like a queen who won't release her knights because she fears they might otherwise turn against her. There is a lot of fear in this. Where the grace of Gate 22 is missing, all that remains of ruling is the grip on people, and behind it lies the fear of losing what has been secured.

The Juxtaposition Cross is rare, and it is a fixed path of its own, like a train on its tracks. Anyone who spends a long time with you can be drawn into this path along with you. You grow into it; it is neither fate nor entitlement.

This Left Angle Cross announces its claim to rule through confrontation, which in the teaching often ends in violence, much like stags clashing heads.

With the Sun in Gate 45, the claim usually comes from outside, yet it is tied to the right to belong. This calls to mind the myth of the child who is denied an inheritance and comes back to demand it. People with this cross find it hard to accept a subordinate position. They meet others head-on with their power and show up again after a defeat. In our time, a rough equivalent would be the corporate raider who breaks up companies to gain control.

Built into this is a challenge to those who rule, so that inertia does not set in at the top and nothing falls into decay at the bottom.

As a Left Angle Cross, it is fulfilled through being with others, whose influence can noticeably change your path. You grow into it; it is not a prediction.