The Eight Trigrams
Last updated 10/7/2026
A trigram is a figure of three stacked lines. Every hexagram you cast is read as two of them, a lower trigram and an upper trigram, so this lesson’s task is to recognize all eight trigrams on sight and to know the image and quality the tradition gives each one.
Prerequisite: a solid line is yang and a broken line is yin. Your output: you can name any three-line figure from its lines.
Why there are exactly eight
A trigram is read from the bottom up, like the lines of a hexagram. Each of its three lines is either yang or yin. That gives two possibilities for the bottom line, two for the middle and two for the top: 2 × 2 × 2 = 8. The eight trigrams are that complete set. No combination is missing, and none repeats.
The eight as a family
The Discussion of the Trigrams (Shuo Gua), a commentary traditionally counted among the Ten Wings, names the eight as a family. Heaven is the father and Earth the mother, and the other six are their three sons and three daughters. The passage opens:
乾，天也，故稱乎父。坤，地也，故稱乎母。震一索而得男，故謂之長男。
Qian is heaven, so it is called the father. Kun is earth, so it is called the mother. Zhen gains a son at the first seeking, so it is called the eldest son.
The chart places each figure by its name.
The names follow what you can see in the lines. To name a trigram, look for the odd line. If all three lines match, the figure is a parent: three yang lines make Heaven, and three yin lines make Earth. Otherwise one line differs from the other two, and the chart marks it in red. A single yang line makes a son; a single yin line makes a daughter. Its position gives the birth order: at the bottom, the eldest; in the middle, the middle child; at the top, the youngest.
The text describes each child as obtained in a first, second or third “seeking” (索) between the parents, and James Legge’s translation (Legge, sec. 10) reads these as the first, second and third lines. The Great Commentary (Xici, part II) states the same pattern from the other side, and the commentary printed with it under the name of Han Kangbo gives the reason:
陽卦多陰，陰卦多陽。
The yang trigrams have more yin lines; the yin trigrams have more yang lines.
夫少者，多之所宗；一者，眾之所歸。
The few are what the many take as their principal; the one is where the many return.
A trigram is named for its single odd line, not for its majority.
This procedure is a memory aid built on the text’s family names. The names are designations for the figures. They are not claims about gender or character.
Image and quality
Each trigram also has a natural image: heaven, earth, thunder, wind, water, fire, mountain or lake. The same text gives each figure one quality in a single sentence:
乾，健也；坤，順也；震，動也；巽，入也；坎，陷也；離，麗也；艮，止也；兌，說也。
Qian is strength, Kun compliance, Zhen movement, Xun entering, Kan the pit, Li clinging, Gen stopping, Dui delight.
The chart glosses these as strong, yielding, arousing, penetrating, dangerous, clinging, still and joyous. Read a quality as the figure’s basic tendency. It describes the trigram; it does not predict what will happen to you.
Opposites share a row
Take either figure in a row of the chart and change every line: you get the other. Heaven becomes Earth, Thunder becomes Wind, Water becomes Fire, and Mountain becomes Lake. The Shuo Gua sets out the same four couples:
天地定位，山澤通氣，雷風相薄，水火不相射。
Heaven and earth fix the positions; mountain and lake exchange their breath; thunder and wind press on each other; water and fire do not strike at each other.
So the chart shows the family and the four pairs of opposites at once.
Always start from the bottom
Thunder and Mountain are the same shape turned upside down, and so are Wind and Lake. Read a trigram from the top down and you will misname all four. Begin with the bottom line every time, exactly as you will when you build a hexagram.
Where this leads
Each trigram has its own page in the trigram reference, with its full set of received correspondences, such as element, direction and season. The next lesson, Forming the Hexagrams, stacks two trigrams into a six-line hexagram.