Hexagram

A hexagram (gua) is a figure of six horizontal lines, each either unbroken (yang, firm) or broken (yin, yielding), built from two stacked trigrams. The I Ching holds sixty-four hexagrams, the complete permutation of the eight trigrams combined in pairs. Each hexagram carries a name, a judgment on the whole figure, an image derived from its constituent trigrams, and six line-statements attached to each position from bottom to top.

Wang Bi’s classical commentary states the interpretive rule: “each hexagram is a unified entity and that its overall meaning or ‘controlling principle’ is expressed in its name, which then is amplified in the hexagram Judgment. Moreover, the controlling principle usually resides in the master or ruler of the hexagram, one line that is sovereign over all the others” (Wang Bi / Lynn, The Classic of Changes). The lines relate to one another through correspondence (resonance between lines in fixed positions), holding-together (adjacent-line relation), and rulership, each yielding favorable or unfavorable configurations (R. Wilhelm, I Ching).

The hexagram is not a fate. It is the compact symbolic notation of a situation — a pattern of force in which human action, relation, and timing are mapped onto the fundamental opposition of yin and yang. The sixty-four hexagrams are, as Hellmut Wilhelm put it, a “strict norm which underlies individual, changing situations and at the same time provides the frame for life in all its comprehensiveness” (H. Wilhelm, Change).

Relationships

• trigram
• judgment
• archetypal-situation
• moving-lines

Primary sources

• classic-of-changes-wang-bi (Wang Bi / Lynn 1994)
• i-ching-wilhelm-baynes (R. Wilhelm / Baynes 1950)
• wilhelm-change-eight-lectures (H. Wilhelm 1960)