Category
Bagua Trigrams
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The eight trigrams, or bagua, are the three-line figures built from broken and unbroken lines that combine in pairs to form the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. Each carries a name, a natural image (heaven, earth, thunder, water, mountain, wind, fire, lake), a family member and a direction. Two arrangements are standard: the Earlier Heaven sequence attributed to Fu Xi and the Later Heaven sequence attributed to King Wen, which is the one used in feng shui.
Facts
Overview
- Entries in the Atlas
- 8
- What Defines This Grouping
- The eight three-line figures (bagua) of broken and unbroken lines whose pairwise combination gives the sixty-four hexagrams of the Yijing. 1
- Size of the Traditional Set
- 8 trigrams 1
Origins
- Whose Classification This Is
- The trigrams' names, images, family members and directional attributes are set out in the Shuogua, one of the "Ten Wings" appended to the Zhouyi, and not in the hexagram text itself. 2
Attestation
- Era of Attestation
- The trigram system belongs to the Ten Wings commentaries of the Warring States and Han periods, later than the hexagram text they interpret. 1
Sources
- I Ching: The Classic of Changes, translated with an introduction and commentary, the first English translation of the newly discovered second-century BC Mawangdui texts Edward L. Shaughnessy (trans.), 1996
- The I Ching, or Book of Changes Richard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), 1980, Shuo Kua, Discussion of the Trigrams
Learn More
The Eight Bagua
The eight trigrams, or bagua, are the three-line figures, each line broken or unbroken, that combine in pairs to form the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. Each trigram has a name, a natural image (heaven, earth, thunder, water, mountain, wind, fire, lake), and a web of associations: a family member, a direction, a season, an element of the wu xing.
The eight are arranged in two classic sequences, the Earlier Heaven (Fu Xi) and Later Heaven (King Wen) orders, which place them differently around the compass and are used for different purposes in cosmology, divination and feng shui.
A Cosmological Alphabet
The trigrams function as a small alphabet of cosmic qualities from which the larger vocabulary of the hexagrams is built, and they carry meaning in their own right, in feng shui the bagua maps the trigrams onto the areas of a building or site, and in Chinese cosmology they organise the relations of yin and yang.
The atlas gives each trigram its image, family and directional and elemental associations, and its two classic arrangements. The hexagrams built from them are treated in their own category, and the trigrams connect to the wider Chinese systems under Eastern Systems.
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