The Eight Trigrams

The mnemonic: recite it, then draw it

There are only two kinds of line. An unbroken line is yang 陽, the active force; a broken line is yin 陰, the receptive force. Active and receptive do not mean male and female: a woman who is your manager is, for you, a yang line. Stack three lines and you get 2³, eight possibilities: the eight trigrams (bāguà 八卦).

Zhu Xi's 朱熹 rhyme is the easiest way in: “Qian, three joined; Kun, six pieces. Zhen, a bowl face-up; Gen, a bowl face-down. Li, empty in the middle; Kan, full in the middle. Dui, broken on top; Xun, broken below.”

Qian ☰ is three solid lines. Kun ☷ is three broken lines, six pieces in all. Zhen ☳ has one yang at the bottom and two yin above, like an upturned bowl, solid below and open above. Gen ☶ is the reverse, a bowl turned over. Li ☲ has a yin line in the middle, so it is hollow; Kan ☵ has a yang line in the middle, so it is full. Dui ☱ is open at the top, Xun ☴ at the bottom.

One iron rule: always draw from the bottom up. Life works the same way; nothing stands on an unsteady base. Once you can recite the rhyme, you should be able to draw any trigram without hesitation. Reciting without drawing does not count as knowing.

Nature and family

The most basic images come from nature: Qian is heaven, Kun earth, Zhen thunder, Gen mountain, Li fire, Kan water, Dui lake, Xun wind. Each has its logic. Zhen's yang sits at the bottom, as thunder rumbles up from below the ground. Gen's yang sits on top, like the ridge-line a landscape painter draws. Dui is open above, so it can hold water and form a marsh. Xun has two still lines above and a moving one below, the way wind feels as if it stirs from underneath. Stand Kan on end and it looks almost exactly like the ancient character for water.

In the family, Qian is father and Kun mother, and the other six are the six children born of them. The rule for sorting them is “the scarce is precious”. In a trigram with two yin and one yang, the single yang decides, so it is a son; with two yang and one yin, the single yin decides, so it is a daughter. Then ask which position the deciding line holds: bottom means eldest, middle means middle, top means youngest. So Zhen is the eldest son, Kan the middle son, Gen the youngest son; Xun the eldest daughter, Li the middle daughter, Dui the youngest daughter. Once you see the logic you will not forget it.

The family map extends to the body. Qian is the head, Kun the belly, Zhen the feet, Gen the hands, Kan the ears, Li the eyes, Dui the mouth, Xun the thighs. The feet are the eldest son and the hands the youngest, which gives the old phrase “brothers are like hands and feet” a new depth.

Eight qualities: strong, yielding, moving, entering, sinking, clinging, stopping, delighting

The Discussion of the Trigrams says: “Qian is strength; Kun is yielding; Zhen is movement; Xun is entering; Kan is sinking; Li is clinging; Gen is stopping; Dui is delight.” Trigrams carry images in many domains, nature, family, body, animals, but their qualities matter most, because every hexagram sets two qualities side by side. Do they attract or repel?

Qian, jiàn 健: the heavens turning, strong without pause. Kun, shùn 順: no initiative of its own, it follows heaven and holds everything. Zhen, dòng 動: a yang stirring from beneath. Xun, rù 入: air gets in everywhere; the Chinese idiom for smooth sailing comes from this. Kan, xiàn 陷: deep water and hidden pitfalls; all four classic “hardship” hexagrams, Zhūn 屯, Kǎn 坎, Jiǎn 蹇 and Kùn 困, contain it. Li, lì 麗: not “beautiful” but “attached”, because fire never burns alone; it clings to wood or wick. Gen, zhǐ 止: you meet a mountain and you stop. Dui, yuè 說 (read as 悅): the delight of a young girl, the relief of herders finding water.

Reading hexagrams through these qualities works at once. Earth over Mountain is Qiān 謙, Modesty: the inner trigram stops, the outer one yields; inwardly you know your limit, outwardly you are gentle. Water over Heaven is Xu 需, Waiting: strength within facing danger without, so the wise course is to wait.

The Earlier Heaven numbers and the two arrangements

Two arrangements are common. The Earlier Heaven (xiāntiān 先天) diagram is traditionally credited to Fu Xi: Qian at the top, Kun at the bottom, Li on the left, Kan on the right, Dui upper left, Xun upper right, Zhen lower left, Gen lower right, with the yin-yang taiji in the centre. The trick for reading it is this: from the centre outward equals from the bottom up. The two most often drawn wrongly are Zhen and Gen at the lower corners; read them from the outside in and they come out reversed. The Discussion of the Trigrams describes exactly these four opposed pairs: “Heaven and earth fix their places, mountain and lake exchange breath, thunder and wind stir each other, water and fire do not quarrel.”

This diagram carries a set of Earlier Heaven numbers: Qian 1, Dui 2, Li 3, Zhen 4, Xun 5, Kan 6, Gen 7, Kun 8. Count leftward from Qian down to Zhen for 1–4, then from Xun at the upper right down to Kun for 5–8. Opposite trigrams always sum to nine: Qian 1 and Kun 8, Dui 2 and Gen 7, Li 3 and Kan 6, Zhen 4 and Xun 5. You will need these numbers for the quick casting method in Lesson 10.

The Later Heaven (hòutiān 後天) diagram, credited to King Wen, is about directions and seasons: Li south, Kan north, Zhen east, Dui west, Qian northwest, Kun southwest, Gen northeast, Xun southeast. The passage beginning “the Lord comes forth in Zhen” traces all things setting out from the east in spring and travelling round the year. Later geomancy, five-phase theory and directional lore mostly follow this diagram. Know both, but fix the Earlier Heaven layout and numbers first.