The Eight Trigrams (Bagua) Chart: What Each I Ching Trigram Means

The 8 I Ching trigrams at a glance: Heaven, Earth, Thunder, Wind, Water, Fire, Mountain and Lake, with each one's quality, family role, direction and animal.

The table of images

Trigram	Figure	Nature	Quality	Family	Direction	Body	Animal
Qian	☰	Heaven	strong	father	northwest	head	horse
Kun	☷	Earth	yielding	mother	southwest	belly	ox
Zhen	☳	Thunder	moving	eldest son	east	foot	dragon
Xun	☴	Wind, wood	entering	eldest daughter	southeast	thigh	rooster
Kan	☵	Water	sinking	middle son	north	ear	pig
Li	☲	Fire	clinging	middle daughter	south	eye	pheasant
Gen	☶	Mountain	stopping	youngest son	northeast	hand	dog
Dui	☱	Lake	joyful	youngest daughter	west	mouth	sheep

All of this comes from the Shuogua ("Discussion of the Trigrams"). The directions are those listed in the chapter that begins "The Lord comes forth in Zhen"; later ages called this the Later Heaven (or King Wen) arrangement of the eight trigrams.

For each trigram's fuller images, its Earlier and Later Heaven directions, its phase, the Shuogua text, and the eight hexagrams it forms above and below, see the page for each: Qian, Dui, Li, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Gen, Kun.

How to remember the figures

Qian, three unbroken lines; Kun, six broken pieces. Zhen, a bowl facing up; Gen, a bowl turned over. Li, empty in the middle; Kan, full in the middle. Dui, open at the top; Xun, broken at the bottom.

This is the rhyme of the trigram images at the front of Zhu Xi's Zhouyi Benyi ("Original Meaning of the Zhouyi"). A trigram is read from the bottom up: Zhen is one yang line below and two yin lines above, like a bowl facing up; Gen is the reverse, like a bowl turned over.

How to use the images

Each of the sixty-four hexagrams is two trigrams stacked one on the other, and nearly every hexagram name and every Image comes from the images of the lower and upper trigrams. Kan (Water) below and Dui (Lake) above, a lake without water, is Kun (Exhaustion). Qian (Heaven) below and Kun (Earth) above, heaven and earth in communion, is Tai (Peace). Li (Fire) below and Kan (Water) above, water over fire, is Jiji (After Completion).

When you read a hexagram, first pick out the lower and upper trigrams and think about what kind of situation the two images make when they are put together. Then read the judgment, and it will often fall into place. To find which hexagram a given pair of trigrams makes, see The 64 hexagrams.