The Primary Hexagram - Understanding Your Starting Point

Once you have cast your six lines and carefully noted any changing lines, the complete six-line figure you’ve recorded is known as the Primary Hexagram. This hexagram is your foundational starting point for understanding the I Ching’s response to your inquiry. It represents the immediate situation, the prevailing energies, or the core context of your question at the moment of casting.

What is the Primary Hexagram?

The Primary Hexagram (also sometimes referred to as the “Present Hexagram,” “First Hexagram,” or “Original Hexagram”) is the six-line figure formed directly by the results of your individual line casts. This includes any special markings you’ve made for changing lines (e.g., lines with a sum of 6 or 9).

For example, if your cast resulted in:

• Line 1 (bottom): Stable Yang (7)
• Line 2: Changing Yin (6)
• Line 3: Stable Yin (8)
• Line 4: Changing Yang (9)
• Line 5: Stable Yang (7)
• Line 6 (top): Stable Yin (8)

The Primary Hexagram is the visual representation of these six lines, drawn from bottom to top, complete with the notations for lines 2 and 4 indicating their changing nature.

What the Primary Hexagram Represents

The Primary Hexagram generally offers insight into:

• The Current Situation: It provides a snapshot of the circumstances surrounding your question as they exist now. It describes the present state of affairs.

• The Prevailing Energies: It reflects the dominant forces, influences, and dynamics that are active in relation to your inquiry at the time of the cast.

• The Context of Your Question: It sets the stage and provides the overall framework within which the specific advice of any changing lines (and the potential of the secondary hexagram) should be understood.

• The Starting Point of a Process: If changing lines are present, the Primary Hexagram represents the beginning phase of a transformation or development.

Identifying the Name and Number of Your Primary Hexagram

Each of the 64 possible hexagrams in the I Ching has a unique number (from 1 to 64) and a name (e.g., “The Creative,” “The Receptive,” “Difficulty at the Beginning”). To begin interpreting your Primary Hexagram, you’ll need to identify it.

• Using a Hexagram Lookup Table: Most I Ching books and many online resources provide a lookup table or chart. These charts typically allow you to find a hexagram based on its structure:

  • By its lower and upper trigrams (each hexagram is composed of two three-line figures called trigrams).
  • By visually matching the pattern of solid and broken lines.

• Software or Apps: Many I Ching apps or software programs will automatically identify the hexagram number and name once you input the lines.

Once identified, you would typically turn to the relevant section in your I Ching text to read:

• The Judgment (or Decision): This text offers the core message or overall assessment of the hexagram.
• The Image: This provides symbolic imagery associated with the hexagram and often suggests how a wise person or “superior man” would act in accordance with its energies.
• The Line Texts (for context): Even if there are no changing lines, reading through the texts for all six individual lines of the Primary Hexagram can provide further nuances about the different aspects or stages represented by each position within the overall situation.

The Foundation for Further Insight

If your Primary Hexagram contains changing lines, its meaning is further illuminated and developed by those specific line texts and by the Secondary Hexagram that emerges from the changes (which we’ll discuss in the next article). However, even in such cases, the Primary Hexagram remains the essential foundation. It’s the landscape upon which the drama of change unfolds.

If your reading has no changing lines (a “stable” or “locked” hexagram), then the Primary Hexagram is the only hexagram you will consult, and its texts (Judgment, Image, and individual line texts for nuance) will provide the complete message for your inquiry.

Understanding your Primary Hexagram is therefore the crucial first step in moving from the raw data of your cast to the rich tapestry of wisdom offered by the Book of Changes.

In the next article, we will explore what happens when changing lines are present, leading to “Article 5: The Transformed (Secondary) Hexagram - Mapping the Path of Change.”