Kun — the Receptive

The second hexagram of the I Ching, six broken (yin) lines, name Kun (K’un): the Receptive, pure yin, earth, the yielding. If Qian is the generative pole, Kun is the nurturing pole — the capacity to receive, to carry, to complete, to make actual what Qian initiates as potential.

Kun’s position relative to Qian is not subordinate but co-constitutive. Huang emphasizes the pair: “All sixes indicates that all yin lines alternate to yang lines. As already mentioned, there are two extra Yao Texts with the first and second gua, Qian and Kun. Qian represents Heaven, pure yang, and Kun represents earth, pure yin” (Huang 1998). The two extra Yao Texts — one for Qian’s “all nines,” one for Kun’s “all sixes” — mark the hexagrams’ structural uniqueness: only Qian and Kun have line-texts for the total transformation into the opposite hexagram.

Kun’s line-texts move from “When there is hoarfrost underfoot, solid ice is near” (line 1, the Receptive’s early registration of what is coming) through patience, carrying, completion, to the sixth line’s warning against the Receptive’s overreach into contention: “Dragons fight in the meadow; their blood is black and yellow.” Kun knows how to yield; when it refuses to yield and mimics Qian’s assertion, the result is cosmic disorder.

In Jungian terms Kun is the anima-pole — the receptive, lunar, feminine principle that European alchemy figured as Luna to Sol. In Greene’s psychological astrology Kun corresponds to the Moon sign and the feeling-memory matrix (see sun-moon-as-luminaries). In typology Kun registers the sensation-feeling axis. In mythology it is Demeter to Qian’s Zeus, Gaia to Uranus, Isis to Osiris. The co-constitution is the point: no individuation without the work of both poles.

Relationships

• qian-creative
• yin-yang
• hexagram
• anima
• sun-moon-as-luminaries
• neumann-great-mother

Primary sources

• i-ching-wilhelm-baynes (R. Wilhelm 1950)
• huang-complete-i-ching (Huang 1998)