Trigrams and hexagrams: read the structure first

Three lines form a trigram; six form a hexagram

Each line has a yin or yang form, so three lines have eight possible combinations: the eight trigrams. Placing one trigram above another gives eight times eight, or 64 hexagrams.

Lines one to three form the lower trigram; lines four to six form the upper trigram. Count from the bottom. The first line is at the foot of the figure and the sixth is at the top.

Learn the names and their basic images

The Shuo Gua associates the trigrams with natural images. These help you recognize a figure; they are not rules for inferring a real event from a symbol.

• Qian 乾 ☰: Heaven; Kun 坤 ☷: Earth.
• Zhen 震 ☳: Thunder; Xun 巽 ☴: Wind.
• Kan 坎 ☵: Water; Li 离 ☲: Fire.
• Gen 艮 ☶: Mountain; Dui 兑 ☱: Lake.

Changing the order changes the hexagram

Water above Fire is Ji Ji 既济, number 63 in the King Wen sequence, commonly translated as After Completion. Fire above Water is Wei Ji 未济, number 64, Before Completion. The same two trigrams in different positions produce different hexagrams.

In Chinese compound descriptions, the upper trigram is usually named first: 水火既济 means Water over Fire. King Wen numbers identify a sequence, not a ranking of good and bad outcomes. Read the name, hexagram text and individual line texts as distinct parts of the material.

Check the figure before interpreting it

After a cast, identify the lower and upper trigrams, then find the changing lines. Only those lines flip to create the resulting hexagram. That second figure follows a clear transformation rule; it is not a confirmed account of the future.

Try entering 7, 8, 7, 8, 7, 8 from bottom to top. The result is Fire below Water, Ji Ji, with no changing lines. Then change only the first 7 to 9 and observe the resulting hexagram. Wenbu’s short themes are original reflection prompts; ask for a named passage and source when you want to study the classical text.