The eight trigrams — reading heaven, lake, fire, thunder and the rest
updated · 5 min read
The I Ching uses symbols made of three stacked lines, each yang or yin. Two possibilities over three places gives eight. These are the trigrams. A hexagram is two of them, one above the other: eight by eight gives sixty-four.
The three lines are counted from the bottom. The first trigram is three yang lines and the last three yin. Those two are the poles, and the other six lie between them. How yang and yin are mixed is exactly what separates the eight.
Which is to say: learn eight and you can read the names of all sixty-four. There is no need to memorise sixty-four.
The eight
| Trigram | Stands for | What it is taken to do |
|---|---|---|
| Qian | Heaven | Creates with force. Leads |
| Dui | Lake | Gladness, ease, what comes out of the mouth |
| Li | Fire | Lights up. Makes plain |
| Zhen | Thunder | Sets off. Shock, beginning |
| Xun | Wind | Enters in. Follows, pervades |
| Kan | Water | Steepness, flow, depth |
| Gen | Mountain | Stops. Does not move |
| Kun | Earth | Receives. Raises and supports |
The things they stand for are all from nature: heaven, lake, fire, thunder, wind, water, mountain, earth. Take it that the I Ching set out to hold the world with these eight.
The first half of a name is the upper trigram
In the Chinese names, the symbol placed above comes first and the one below second. The third hexagram is water above thunder; the fourteenth is fire above heaven.
With that rule, a name calls up a picture. Thunder moving under water; fire above heaven. Taken as a scene, the meaning becomes easier to guess at.
Take the fourth hexagram: mountain above, water below. The scene is mist at the foot of a mountain, with nothing visible ahead. And the reading of that hexagram is precisely that there is something you cannot see yet. Name and content hold together.
Swap the upper and lower and it is a different hexagram. The third and the fortieth use the same two trigrams and say quite different things. Always check the order.
The eight where the same trigram is doubled
Eight of the sixty-four have the same trigram above and below — heaven over heaven, earth over earth, water over water, fire over fire and so on. These are taken to be where that trigram's nature shows most strongly.
The other fifty-six combine different trigrams. Since swapping them gives a different hexagram, that is eight times seven, fifty-six, plus the eight doubled ones, making sixty-four. Even the arithmetic is tidy.
Heaven doubled, for instance, is the form of heaven above heaven, taken to show force at its full. The reading adds that what rises all the way turns, so the key is not letting it go to your head.
Common questions
- The trigram names are hard to remember.
- What matters more in practice is what they stand for: heaven, lake, fire, thunder, wind, water, mountain and earth. The hexagram names are usually spoken through those.
- Do I need to learn all sixty-four hexagrams?
- You do not. Learn the eight trigrams and you can guess at the content from a name. This service also shows the reading for each hexagram.
- Are the trigrams connected to directions?
- They are. Each is associated with a direction, and they are used that way in feng shui among other things. For reading a hexagram alone, you do not need the directions.