Eight Trigrams
An Avatar.Global Resource
Eight Trigrams
The Eight Trigrams (八卦, bagua, a.k.a. pa-kua) are the eight three-line figures built from yin (broken) and yang (unbroken) lines — the fundamental alphabet of Chinese cosmology and the building blocks of the sixty-four hexagrams of the Yijing. They are Heaven (☰ qian), Earth (☷ kun), Thunder (☳ zhen), Wind (☴ xun), Water (☵ kan), Fire (☲ li), Mountain (☶ gen), and Lake (☱ dui), and they "remain in daily use across Chinese culture (fengshui, protective mirrors, calendrics)."[1] Tradition credits their invention to the mythic ruler Fu Xi; historically they crystallized from Zhou-era divination. Arranged in the "Former Heaven" and "Later Heaven" patterns, they map the cosmos before and after creation and supply the firing schedules of Daoist alchemy. In LP terms, the eight trigrams are an elementary archetype vocabulary: eight irreducible patterns of Force and Formation from which a complete grammar of change is generated.
Concept Map
Key Terms
Daoism Key Terms
Daoism >
Notes
The Eight Figures
| Trigram | Name | Image | Family | Attribute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ☰ | Qian 乾 | Heaven | Father | Creative, strong |
| ☷ | Kun 坤 | Earth | Mother | Receptive, yielding |
| ☳ | Zhen 震 | Thunder | Eldest son | Arousing, movement |
| ☴ | Xun 巽 | Wind | Eldest daughter | Gentle, penetrating |
| ☵ | Kan 坎 | Water | Middle son | Abysmal, danger |
| ☲ | Li 離 | Fire | Middle daughter | Clinging, radiance |
| ☶ | Gen 艮 | Mountain | Youngest son | Stillness, resting |
| ☱ | Dui 兌 | Lake | Youngest daughter | Joy, satisfaction |
The family assignments — father, mother, three sons, three daughters — make the set a complete kinship system: the trigrams are not eight things but eight relations and dynamics, which is what lets them model families, bodies, states, and seasons with the same eight signs.[1]
Two Arrangements
Daoist cosmology deploys the trigrams in two patterns laid over the directions:[1]
- Former Heaven (xiantian): the pre-creation pattern — Heaven due south, Earth due north, the pairs facing in perfect balance; the world as primordial union.
- Later Heaven (houtian): the post-creation pattern — the trigrams rotated into their dynamic, temporal positions; the world as process, mapped onto seasons and directions.
The two patterns structure everything from fengshui compasses to alchemical schedules: internal alchemy uses the trigrams to name the body's energies (Fire/li at the heart, Water/kan at the kidneys) and the Yijing's hexagrams to time the firing process.[1][2]
Lightning Path Contextualization
- A minimal generative grammar. Three binary positions yield eight archetypal states; pairing them yields sixty-four situations. The economy is the point: an entire symbol-system of change from one bit, repeated. The LP recognizes this as genuine archetypal engineering — a creation template in miniature.
- Relations, not essences. Each trigram is defined by composition and relation (to parents, children, directions, seasons), never by isolated substance — the same relational ontology the LP asserts for persons and systems.
- A working connection appliance. Through the Yijing, the trigrams became the hardware of a three-millennia-old Connection Appliance; through alchemy, the schedule of a somatic practice; through fengshui, a reading of environments. Same symbols, three practice modalities.
Cautions and Distortions
- Family roles are not fate. The gendered family assignments encode patriarchal kinship; use the structural insight (complete relational set) without naturalizing the hierarchy.
- Correspondence inflation. Later tradition mapped the trigrams onto everything from livestock to body parts; the mappings are mnemonic and ritual tools, not physics.
Citation and Legal
The SpiritWiki is a freely available, open-access Knowledge System devoted to health, healing, and reconnection. You may freely use information in the SpiritWiki; citation and attribution are welcomed, but not required. You can help this knowledge system grow by joining its Patreon.
The SpiritWiki is marked CC0 1.0 Universal and in the public domain, free for everyone on the planet to use. Please support its growth.