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The Inner World

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Bagua Trigrams

Xun

SHWEN

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Origin 1011 to 1077

Xun, the Gentle (Wind and Wood), has one broken yin line beneath two unbroken yang lines: a yielding entry supporting firmness above. Its images are wind and wood alike, the wind that penetrates everywhere and the tree that grows slowly and inescapably; its attribute is gentle, gradual, persistent penetration. In the family of trigrams it is the Eldest Daughter. In the Later Heaven arrangement Xun occupies the southeast and belongs to the phase Wood and to late spring and early summer. Its animal is the fowl or hen, and its body part the thighs, which advance step by step. The weak line beneath shows influence that works by yielding and adapting rather than by force. Doubled it forms hexagram 57, The Gentle, which teaches that lasting effect comes from mild but ceaseless action, like the wind that shapes the dunes or the root that splits the rock; clarity of aim must guide such penetration, or gentleness dissipates into mere compliance.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1011 to 1077 2Tradition: Xiantian (Earlier Heaven) arrangement of Shao Yong
Origin Period
1924 to 1950 2Tradition: Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching (1950)
Origin Period
400 BCE to 100 BCE 1Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Origin Period
Xun is one of the eight trigrams, traditionally attributed to the legendary sage Fu Xi. The canonical text takes its core shape in the Western Zhou and gathers its commentarial layer, the Ten Wings, across the Warring States and into the Han, roughly the fourth to first century BCE. The Song philosopher Shao Yong (1011 to 1077) set out the numerological "earlier heaven" sequencing of the eight trigrams still cited today, and Richard Wilhelm's German translation of the Yijing, published in 1924 and rendered into English by Cary Baynes in 1950, carried the trigram system to a wide Western readership. 2
Attributed Author / Compiler
By tradition: the eight trigrams to the legendary Fu Xi, and with them the xiantian arrangement that bears his name. 2Tradition: Xiantian (Earlier Heaven) arrangement of Shao Yong
Attributed Author / Compiler
No named author. The trigram doctrine - attributes, family positions, directional arrangement - is a Warring States and Han commentarial system, and the xiantian arrangement ascribed to Fu Xi is Shao Yong's, of the eleventh century. 2
Language
Classical Chinese 3
Attributions
Polarity
Yin 1
Rival Systems
A Rival System's Attribution
Earlier Heaven (xiantian) arrangement: southwest. Shao Yong's arrangement, ascribed to Fu Xi, disagrees with the Shuo Gua on all eight trigrams. 2Tradition: Xiantian (Earlier Heaven) arrangement of Shao Yong
A Rival System's Attribution
Later Heaven (houtian) arrangement: southeast 3Tradition: Houtian (Later Heaven) arrangement of the Shuo Gua
A Rival System's Attribution
This is the direction recorded here. 3Tradition: Houtian (Later Heaven) arrangement of the Shuo Gua
Identity
Trigram Image
Wind 1
Family Position
Eldest Daughter 1
Element
Wood 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The Shuo Gua gives Xun as wind and wood, the gentle and penetrating, the eldest daughter, and among animals the fowl. 3Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Learn More
Xun, the Gentle, Wind and Wood

Xun is one of the eight trigrams (bagua) of the Yijing. It is composed of a single broken yin line beneath two yang lines, and its attribute is Wind, and also Wood, the Gentle, associated with penetration, gradual influence, and the pliant force that reaches everywhere as wind slips through every gap. In the family symbolism it is the Eldest Daughter, and its polarity is yin. Its associated element is Wood, and in the Later Heaven arrangement of the bagua its direction is southeast. Each of the eight trigrams combines with another to form the sixty-four hexagrams of the Yijing. These are the conventions of the Chinese cosmological and divinatory tradition, in which Xun, gentle and penetrating, is the complement of the Arousing thunder of Zhen.

In the Earlier Heaven or Fu Xi arrangement, an idealised and static ordering of the eight trigrams older than the Later Heaven sequence used for compass direction above, Xun stands in the southwest rather than the southeast. The Fu Xi ordering has one further afterlife outside Chinese cosmology: in 1701 the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet sent Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, from Beijing, a diagram of exactly this arrangement of the sixty-four hexagrams, and Leibniz, already at work on binary arithmetic, saw that broken and unbroken lines mapped onto his 0 and 1; he published the correspondence in Paris in 1703.

Sources Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in ChinaRichard J. Smith with The I Ching, or Book of ChangesRichard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), The Five "Confucian" ClassicsMichael Nylan

Xun in the Two Arrangements

Xun occupies the southwest in the Earlier Heaven arrangement attributed to Fuxi, facing Zhen in the northeast. In the Later Heaven arrangement attributed to King Wen it moves to the southeast, which is where the compass schools and the classical commentaries place it.

The Later Heaven order follows the year rather than a symmetry, and the southeast is the turn from late spring into early summer, the point at which growth that began in the east is spreading. A trigram whose attributes are wind and wood, the gradual and penetrating influence, fits that stretch of the cycle better than it fits any cardinal point.

In the Later Heaven order Xun belongs to the phase Wood, shared with Zhen, and the pairing is worth noticing: Zhen is wood as the first upward thrust, Xun is wood as the slow lateral spread, and the phase covers both. From the Shuogua Xun takes the fowl among animals and the thigh among the parts of the body, the joint that carries the body forward without being what touches the ground. In the family scheme Xun is the eldest daughter, holding the first yin line at the bottom, exactly mirroring Zhen.

The mirroring is structural rather than decorative. Zhen and Xun are inversions of each other, and every correspondence they carry can be read as a pair.

Sources Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in ChinaRichard J. Smith with The I Ching, or Book of ChangesRichard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), The Five "Confucian" ClassicsMichael Nylan

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Baguazhang, Disciplines

One of the eight palm changes is named for and mapped onto this trigram, Xun, whose attribute is Wind.

Source Lost T'ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch'ing DynastyDouglas Wile
Southwest, Directions

In the Earlier Heaven arrangement of the eight trigrams, Xun the Gentle stands in the southwest. The Later Heaven arrangement puts Kun, the Receptive, there. Earlier Heaven is read as a static symmetry of opposites; Later Heaven as a cycle of change through the year.

Source Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in ChinaRichard J. Smith

Attested In

The Ten Wings, Scripture Portions

The Shuogua, one of the Wings, is the treatise that gives the trigrams their attributes and their families.

Contained In

Earlier Heaven Bagua, Sacred Geometry

One of the eight trigrams the arrangement places. Both arrangements order the same eight; they differ only in where each one sits.

Later Heaven Bagua, Sacred Geometry

One of the eight trigrams the arrangement places. Both arrangements order the same eight; they differ only in where each one sits.

Disciplines That Use This

I Ching, Disciplines

The eight bagua trigrams, each hexagram being a pair of them.

Source Zhouyi: The Book of ChangesRichard Rutt (trans.)

Instances

Xun, Twenty-Four Mountains
Source The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui: Chinese GeomancyStephen Skinner

Originates in Language

Classical Chinese, Languages
Source The I Ching, or Book of ChangesRichard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.)
Sources
1. The Five "Confucian" Classics
Michael Nylan, Yale University Press, 2001On the Changes, the Ten Wings, and the formation of the Five ClassicsView the Source
2. Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in China
Richard J. Smith, University of Virginia Press, 2008The bagua and its Earlier and Later Heaven arrangements in Chinese cosmology and divinationView the Source
3. The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Richard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), Princeton University Press, 1980Shuogua (Discussion of the Trigrams): trigram attributes, images and family symbolismView the Source

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