The building blocks
The eight trigrams
Three lines, eight possibilities. Every hexagram is two of these stacked — an outer image and an inner image — which makes the bagua the fastest route into reading the text for yourself.
Qian · Heaven
lines bottom→top: 1 1 1
Pure yang, three unbroken lines. Creative force, initiative, the sky that does not stop. As an outer trigram it is the pressure of events pushing you forward; as an inner one it is your own drive, which is not always the same thing. Its fault is excess: force applied past the point where force helps.
Family role: Father Father · Element: Metal · Direction: Northwest
15 hexagrams use this trigram. A few: 1 5 6 9 10 11 12 13 … 14 25 26 33 34 43 44
Opposite: Kun · Earth — flip all three lines and that is what you get.
Dui · Lake
lines bottom→top: 1 1 0
Open water in motion, one yin line above two yang. Joy, exchange, persuasion, the pleasure of company. Outward, it is how a situation invites you in; inward, it is what you actually want. Its fault is that pleasing and being pleased are easy to mistake for progress.
Family role: Youngest Daughter · Element: Metal · Direction: West
15 hexagrams use this trigram. A few: 10 17 19 28 31 38 41 43 … 45 47 49 54 58 60 61
Opposite: Gen · Mountain — flip all three lines and that is what you get.
Li · Fire
lines bottom→top: 1 0 1
Fire clinging to fuel, yang outside a yin centre. Clarity, culture, and the honest dependence on whatever feeds you. It is the trigram of seeing and being seen. Its fault is that brightness outlives its fuel: what shines needs something to burn, and it will take it from whatever is nearest.
Family role: Middle Daughter · Element: Fire · Direction: South
15 hexagrams use this trigram. A few: 13 14 21 22 30 35 36 37 … 38 49 50 55 56 63 64
Opposite: Kan · Water — flip all three lines and that is what you get.
Zhen · Thunder
lines bottom→top: 1 0 0
Thunder, yang under two yin. Shock, awakening, the first movement that breaks stillness. It marks beginnings and interruptions, the moment something starts whether or not you are ready. Its fault is that it startles and moves on, leaving more noise than structure behind it.
Family role: Eldest Son · Element: Wood · Direction: East
15 hexagrams use this trigram. A few: 3 16 17 21 24 25 27 32 … 34 40 42 51 54 55 62
Opposite: Xun · Wind — flip all three lines and that is what you get.
Xun · Wind
lines bottom→top: 0 1 1
Wind under the door, yin under two yang. Gradual penetration, influence by repetition, the thing that gets in without forcing. It is the trigram of slow work and quiet persistence. Its fault is that it can be too yielding to be clear, and something that enters gently can also be hard to expel.
Family role: Eldest Daughter · Element: Wood · Direction: Southeast
15 hexagrams use this trigram. A few: 9 18 20 28 32 37 42 44 … 46 48 50 53 57 59 61
Opposite: Zhen · Thunder — flip all three lines and that is what you get.
Kan · Water
lines bottom→top: 0 1 0
Water in the abyss, yang held between two yin. Danger, depth, effort, and the honest heart in a hard place. It is not disaster but the difficult middle: the gorge you have to get through rather than around. Its fault is that it can mistake endurance for a plan.
Family role: Middle Son · Element: Water · Direction: North
15 hexagrams use this trigram. A few: 3 4 5 6 7 8 29 39 … 40 47 48 59 60 63 64
Opposite: Li · Fire — flip all three lines and that is what you get.
Gen · Mountain
lines bottom→top: 0 0 1
Mountain, yang resting on two yin. Stillness, boundary, stopping at the right moment. It is the trigram of the deliberate pause and of the place you cannot pass. Its fault is that a good stopping point becomes a hiding place, and stillness that was wisdom becomes habit.
Family role: Youngest Son · Element: Earth · Direction: Northeast
15 hexagrams use this trigram. A few: 4 15 18 22 23 26 27 31 … 33 39 41 52 53 56 62
Opposite: Dui · Lake — flip all three lines and that is what you get.
Kun · Earth
lines bottom→top: 0 0 0
Pure yin, three broken lines. Receptivity, support, the ground that receives everything and claims nothing. As an outer trigram it is the situation offering you no purchase; as an inner one it is your own patience. Its fault is passivity that calls itself acceptance.
Family role: Mother · Element: Earth · Direction: Southwest
15 hexagrams use this trigram. A few: 2 7 8 11 12 15 16 19 … 20 23 24 35 36 45 46
Opposite: Qian · Heaven — flip all three lines and that is what you get.
Why three lines, and why eight
A line is either solid (yang) or broken (yin). Stack three of them and there are exactly eight ways to do it: 2 × 2 × 2. That is the whole of the bagua. There is no ninth trigram and no arrangement that has been left out, which is why the set feels closed in a way that most symbolic systems do not.
Stack two trigrams and you get 8 × 8 = 64, the hexagrams. So the hexagrams are not an arbitrary list of sixty-four stories. They are the complete set of six-line figures, and the trigrams are the vocabulary it is built from. Learn the eight and the rest of the system becomes readable rather than memorised.
Read the lines from the bottom up, and write 1 for yang and 0 for yin. Qian becomes
111, Kun 000, Zhen 100 (a single yang line at the
bottom, everything else still). That is the same encoding used throughout this site, and
it is why the relations on every hexagram page can be derived by calculation instead of
by opinion.
Outer and inner: how to read two at once
Take any hexagram and name its two trigrams out loud, upper over lower. Hexagram 3 is Water over Thunder, which reads as a stirring at the base of something difficult and unfinished: the shock is already underway, and what surrounds it is the gorge you have to cross. That is not the full reading, but it is the right first move, and it works every time.
The distinction that repays attention is which one is which. The lower trigram is the inner situation, the part you are standing in and usually already know something about. The upper trigram is the outer situation, what the world is doing around you and what you will have to move through. When the two agree, the reading is unusually direct. When they contradict each other, the hexagram is usually about that contradiction, and the text will say so.
The four opposite pairs
Flip every line of a trigram and you land on exactly one other. Heaven becomes Earth, Thunder becomes Wind, Water becomes Fire, Mountain becomes Lake. There are only four such pairs, and they account for half of how the system is put together: because every hexagram is two trigrams, flipping all six lines swaps both halves at once and sends you to that hexagram's complementary partner. That is why the 64 fall into 32 mirror pairs, and why the complement of a reading is not a vague opposite but a precisely defined position. Every hexagram page here links to its own.
The eight doubled trigrams
In eight hexagrams the upper and lower trigram are the same. These are the clearest doors into the system: the image is stated twice and nothing dilutes it, so the reading is unusually clean. If you are learning, start here rather than at number 1.
How to use them
Three habits are enough. Name the two trigrams before you read any translation. Decide which one is inner and which is outer. Then look the hexagram up and see whether the text develops the tension you already spotted. If it does, you are reading the book rather than reading about it.