Gate 21 Line 6: The Sage Hunter — Mastery Through the Three Lives
The Hexagram and the Line
Gate 21, Shih Ho — "Biting Through" or "The Hunter" — is the fire of fire: assertion in the Heart Center, the willingness to take on what others will not. The hunter is the one who sees the prey, names the target, and brings the matter to a conclusion. Gate 21 says, "I will control this. I will finish this. I will do what is required." It is the courage of action, the ego's capacity to step forward and bear consequences.
The 6th line carries this hunter-fire into the role of the elder, the embodiment, the one who has hunted enough times to have become the hunt itself. Where Line 1 investigates the bite, Line 2 withdraws to know it, Line 3 suffers the consequences of biting, Line 4 negotiates the timing of the strike, and Line 5 teaches others how to bite, Line 6 is the bite — remembered, integrated, made into wisdom that others can follow.
The Gift: The Embodied Master
The conscious, healthy expression of Gate 21 Line 6 is the benevolent sovereign — the one who has lived through the fire of assertion and emerged with a generosity of spirit. They no longer need to prove they can control; they simply are a living demonstration of healthy will, of action taken with integrity, of a heart that has learned to lead without dominating. Their optimism is hard-won: they have failed, succeeded, grieved, and prevailed, and they trust the process. People gather around them not because they command, but because their presence clarifies. They become the elder, the grandmother, the chairman, the patron — the role model whose mere existence instructs.
The Shadow: The Tyrant or the Reluctant Elder
In its not-self expression, Gate 21 Line 6 collapses into one of two polarities. The first is the aging tyrant: the hunter who cannot release the leash, who hoards control long after the season of hunting has passed, who becomes rigid, dictatorial, or bitterly certain that the world is going to ruin in younger hands. The second is the withdrawn cynic: the elder who refuses the call to role model, who hides, who has lost the optimism that the 6th line requires, who contracts into bitterness, suspicion, or quiet despair. Both shadows share a Saturnine refusal to complete the transition from subject to elder, from doer to be-er.
The Planetary Tone: Jupiterian Wisdom, Saturnine Fear
The 6th line carries the resonance of Jupiter (♃) as its exalted tone and Saturn (♄) as its detriment. Jupiter is the optimist, the planet of expansion, faith, and the larger arc of meaning — it is the gift of the 6th line, the ability to see one's life as part of a longer story and to find meaning in all three of its phases. Saturn, by contrast, is contraction, fear, the limitation that comes from refusing to let the personal self dissolve into the elder self. When the Jupiterian light shines, the Line 6 becomes a beacon; when Saturnine gravity dominates, the same life-experience hardens into resentment or control.
The Three Lives
The 6th line is famously the line of the three lives. The first ~30 years are experiential — the hunter learns the terrain. Between roughly 30 and 50, the transition begins, often as a crisis or a calling, where the personal self is asked to release its grip. After 50 (and especially after the Saturn return), the 6th line settles into the objectivity of the witness-on-the-mountain, looking back over the hunt with compassion. Gate 21 Line 6 must therefore make peace with this arc: there is a season to hunt, a season to release hunting, and a season to simply be what one has become.
In Profile and Transit
As a profile line, 21/6 is a Role Model / Observer (with whatever its complementary line is), a powerful position of dignified authority tempered by the line's need to be seen in order to be effective. The 6th line is the only line that is actually looking back at the world — it requires an audience, a context in which its embodied wisdom can be received.
When activated by transit — particularly through the Sun moving across a design or personality line, or when a Jupiter return opens a 6th-line gate — there is an opportunity to complete something, to step into elder status in a domain, to be the one who finally brings a long-hunted matter to a graceful close. The invitation is always the same: trust the long arc, stop gripping the spear, and let the life you have already lived teach.