Harm Gate

The hardest-edged gate of the eight, and it sits in a single word: harm. Picture a blade — it cuts whatever it is put to, and it does not make an exception for the hand holding it. Where this gate falls you tend to find injury, illness, accident and trouble that comes looking for you, along with the dangerous stretches a person has already been through.

• Injury and damage: getting hurt, falling ill, accidents, and the setbacks that have to be got through rather than walked around.
• Going after what is owed: collecting a debt, filing suit, chasing a person or recovering stolen goods — the head-on work this gate is genuinely good for.
• Ground you have to take off somebody: selling, competing, contests where only one side can win.
• Risk already run: the rough passages in a history, and how much of the cost of them is still being carried.

An inauspicious gate does not mean do nothing. It means this gate is only useful on the matters that call for meeting something head-on. The same Harm Gate that makes a debt collection go your way will cut straight into a new venture, a house move or a wedding — one gate, and the answer swings entirely on what you are asking it to do.

Nature

Anything unfair or out of balance is physically uncomfortable for the person involved, and papering over it is not in their repertoire. The problem in the room is usually spotted here first — and a setback lands here harder than it lands on anyone else.

Style

When something is wrong the person involved says so, and the instinct is to take the structure apart and find the point where it gives. Conflict is not avoided, and under real pressure the judgement tends to sharpen rather than scatter.

Strength

Diagnosis and correction — finding the hole, closing the gap, handling the crisis while it is still moving. The more the person involved has been through, the further into a situation they see, and they can pull the one thing that actually mattered out of a failure everyone else has written off.

Impression

Sharp, direct, and keeping a certain distance. There are edges, and there is no pretence anywhere — this is the person who will say the true thing out loud in a room that would rather they did not. Not always easy to like; very often exactly right.

Pitfall

The critical eye closes into a loop, and everything the person involved looks at becomes what is wrong with it. Feeling and judgement twist together until the whole effort turns inward, and the fear of being hurt again hardens into a wall that keeps out the good as well. What it costs is not accuracy — the criticism is usually correct — it is everything that never gets built while being right takes up the day.

In a house, Harm Gate is the kitchen — the room where knives and fire are in use every single day.

• The kitchen itself: blade, flame and heat, the one room in a home where cutting and burning are part of the ordinary routine rather than a sign that something has gone wrong.
• Home position: due East, the Zhen Palace, Wood.

The same room carries one symbol on each of the three layers — a gate, a star and a deity. All three are read at once; they are not rival answers to the same question.