Resources / Taoist cosmology
Bagua Instrument
The eight trigrams on their two circles: Earlier Heaven, where each faces its complement, and Later Heaven, where they turn with the year. Choose one to read its image, family place, direction and number.
Later Heaven · Northwest
Qián · Heaven
Heaven · Father · Metal
乾
- Season
- Late autumn
- Phase
- Metal
- Luo Shu number
- 6
- Faces across
- XùnWind
- Body
- Head
- Animal
- Horse
- Image
- Heaven
- Lines, bottom up
- yang, yang, yang
Workbench
Working with the lines
Press a line to turn it from yang to yin and back.
The lines make
Qián 乾
Heaven · Father
Earlier Heaven south, number 1 · Later Heaven northwest, Luo Shu 6
The tradition
The eight trigrams (bagua) are the eight ways three lines, each yang or yin, can be stacked; paired, they make the sixty-four hexagrams of the Yijing. The Shuo Gua, one of the Ten Wings, gives each its images (Qian heaven, Kun earth, Zhen thunder, Xun wind and wood, Kan water, Li fire, Gen mountain, Dui lake) and makes them a family: Qian and Kun the father and mother, the other six their three sons and three daughters.
Two circular arrangements come down from the Song. The Earlier Heaven (xiantian) circle, credited to Fuxi, sets each trigram opposite its complement, Qian facing Kun; it was transmitted through Shao Yong and rests on the Shuo Gua line, heaven and earth fix their places, mountain and lake exchange their breath, thunder and wind stir each other, water and fire do not oppose. The Later Heaven (houtian) circle, credited to King Wen, follows the Shuo Gua's passage on the round of the year that begins, the Lord comes forth in Zhen, and joins the trigrams to seasons, directions and the Luo Shu numbers.
Reading the instrument
- Each trigram is drawn with its bottom line nearest the centre, as the circular diagrams draw them, and read from the bottom up.
- South is at the top by default, as in the classical diagrams, so east lies on the left; North up turns the figure for a reader used to maps.
- In Earlier Heaven every trigram faces its complement, each line reversed. Later Heaven follows the year: Zhen in the east at spring, Li in the south at summer, Dui in the west at autumn, Kan in the north at winter.
- The number beside each trigram is its place in the Earlier Heaven sequence (Qian 1 to Kun 8), or its Luo Shu number in Later Heaven.
- The workbench builds a trigram line by line, changes a single line to show its neighbour, stacks two trigrams into a hexagram with a link to the Yijing caster, and sets out the family.
Where it descends from
- Shuo Gua (Discussion of the Trigrams)
- One of the Ten Wings: the trigrams' images, family, body and animals, and the two passages behind the arrangements (chapters 3 and 5).
- Xici zhuan (Great Commentary)
- The derivation of the trigrams from Taiji through the two modes and the Four Images.
- Shao Yong
- The Song thinker through whom the Earlier Heaven circle and its sequence were transmitted.
- Zhu Xi, Zhouyi benyi
- Prints the Earlier and Later Heaven diagrams at the head of the text, which fixed them for later readers.
- I Ching, or Book of Changes (Richard Wilhelm, tr. Cary F. Baynes)
- The English names used for the hexagrams.
What this does not claim
The arrangements are received diagrams, and their attribution to Fuxi and to King Wen is traditional: both circles are known as drawings from the Song, though the Later Heaven order is set out in words in the Shuo Gua. The seasons and phases belong to the Later Heaven scheme; on the Earlier Heaven circle the phase shown is the trigram's own, carried over for reference. Family roles are symbolic assignments, not social prescriptions, and the hexagram notes are Aetherica study glosses, not translations.
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