Within the depth-psychology corpus, the trigram occupies a foundational structural position in the literature surrounding the I Ching and its psychological applications. The term designates one of the eight three-line figures — composed of broken (yin) and unbroken (yang) lines — whose pairing into hexagrams constitutes the oracular and cosmological grammar of the Book of Changes. Richard Wilhelm’s translations and commentaries establish the primary lexicon: each trigram is assigned elemental, directional, familial, and psychological attributes (Chen as arousing movement, Li as clinging luminosity, K’an as abysmal danger, K’un as receptive earth), and these attributes function as a symbolic vocabulary for understanding psychic states, relational dynamics, and phases of transformation. The Taoist I Ching tradition, represented by Liu I-ming via Cleary, extends this to a hermeneutic method — reading the lower trigram as subject and the upper as object — making the trigram a diagnostic lens for situational self-knowledge. Wang Bi’s classical commentary deploys trigrams as markers of positional ethics within hexagram structure, linking line-placement to virtue and vice. Across all sources, a persistent tension exists between the trigram as cosmological symbol and as pragmatic interpretive unit, a tension that depth-psychological readings have consistently exploited to bridge Chinese correlative cosmology and Western introspective analysis.
The trigram Chen, thunder, the Arousing, is life which breaks out of the depths of the earth; it is the beginning of all movement.
This passage catalogues the eight trigrams as a complete symbolic system encoding elemental, psychological, and cosmological forces central to the religion of light and inner transformation.
, The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, 1931thesis
Regard the bottom trigram as the subject of the reading, the top trigram as the object of that subject. This object could be a person, a job, a situation, an event.
This passage presents the trigram method as a systematic hermeneutic, assigning the lower trigram to the consulting subject and the upper to the external circumstance being interrogated.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
When the trigrams intermingle, that is, when they are in motion, a double movement is observable: first, the usual clockwise movement, cumulative and expanding as time goes on, and determining the events that are passing.
This passage argues that trigrams in dynamic interrelation produce a dual temporal movement — expansive and contracting — through which knowledge of the future becomes structurally accessible.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
When the trigrams intermingle, that is, when they are in motion, a double movement is observable: first, the usual clockwise movement, cumulative and expanding as time goes on.
Parallel to the Wilhelm 1950 passage, this formulation equates the trigrams’ intermingling with the living principle of temporal change and its divinatory legibility.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
The lower primary trigram indicates this keeping still of the back, so that one is no longer aware of one’s body, that is, of one’s personality. The upper primary trigram means courtyard.
This passage illustrates how upper and lower trigrams, when doubled, articulate states of psychological stillness and the dissolution of self-awareness into impersonal presence.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
The individual lines of the upper trigram have no relation to the corresponding lines of the lower trigram, hence the upper and the lower trigram turn their backs on each other.
This passage demonstrates that the absence of correspondence between upper and lower trigrams encodes a specific psychological condition — mutual withdrawal and stillness — within the hexagram of Keeping Still.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
‘Comes’ refers to position within the inner, i.e., lower trigram, while ‘goes’ refers to position in the outer, i.e., upper trigram.
This passage formalizes the inner/outer trigram distinction as a grammar for interpreting movement between internal disposition and external manifestation within a hexagram’s structure.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
The firm element that comes is therefore the nine in the second place. Occupying the middle place in the lower trigram, it creates for the light principle placed in the midst of dark lines a basis of activity.
This passage traces how a specific line’s placement within the lower trigram generates the structural energy of the hexagram, linking positional logic to cosmological polarity.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
He too is in difficulties; these are represented by the nuclear trigram K’an, the Abysmal, danger. King Wên is as it were hidden by this nuclear trigram over him.
This passage shows nuclear trigrams functioning as concealed psychological forces within a hexagram, here encoding danger and obscured virtue beneath outward circumstance.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
The two nuclear trigrams, Kên, Keeping Still, mountain, and Sun, the Gentle, wind (tree), yield the idea of the functioning and development of the primal trends.
This passage argues that nuclear trigrams — those embedded within a hexagram’s inner lines — reveal the underlying developmental tendencies of a situation’s primal forces.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
The two nuclear trigrams, Kên, Keeping Still, mountain, and Sun, the Gentle, wind (tree), yield the idea of the functioning and development of the primal trends.
A parallel formulation emphasizing that nuclear trigrams articulate the hidden developmental logic — the primal trends — latent within the conditions described by the hexagram.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
The upper trigram K’an indicates a well, and the lower trigram Sun symbolizes penetrating under water.
This passage exemplifies the method by which upper and lower trigrams provide the elemental imagery underlying the hexagram’s central symbolic meaning.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
The upper trigram K’an indicates a well, and the lower trigram Sun symbolizes penetrating under water and bringing up the water: this is THE WELL.
This passage demonstrates the direct derivation of the hexagram’s name and meaning from the elemental qualities assigned to its constituent trigrams.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
Wind is an effect of fire. Similarly, the effect of order within the family is to create an influence that brings order into the world.
This passage derives social and ethical teaching from the causal relationship between the trigrams Li (fire) and Sun (wind), illustrating how trigram interaction generates moral analogy.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
Third Yang occupies the middle of three yang lines and the top position of the lower trigram and is situated immediately below the upper trigram.
Wang Bi’s commentary uses the trigram boundary — the threshold between lower and upper — as the defining structural pressure acting upon a line’s virtue and its ethical consequences.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
Second Yang uses it to rise to Fifth Yang of the Sun trigram. As Fifth Yang does not represent the ultimate degree of domestication, it is not the one to block Second Yang.
This passage shows Wang Bi interpreting movement between named trigrams as a logic of resistance and facilitation governing the ethical trajectory of individual lines.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
Cohesion, Trigram, see Li; Compliance, Trigram, see Sun
This index entry confirms the standard concordance mapping between trigram names and their classical appellations in Wang Bi’s commentary tradition.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994aside
The lines of the lower trigram are obstructed, those of the upper trigram are the obstructors.
This passage formalizes the structural antagonism between lower and upper trigrams as an interpretive principle governing obstruction and freedom within a hexagram’s ethical drama.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
Twice is implied by the doubling of the trigram. In relation to the spiritual realm, brightness illumines the four quarters of the world.
This passage notes that the doubling of a single trigram to form a hexagram intensifies its symbolic property, in this case fire’s luminosity extending to all directions.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950aside
The lower nuclear trigram sinks, while the upper rises.
This passage describes the directional energies of nuclear trigrams as a dynamic of descent and ascent that underlies the moral movement encoded in the hexagram of Modesty.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950aside