Kan—rendered variously as the Abysmal, the Sink Hole, the Gorge, Darkness, or simply Water—occupies one of the most psychologically charged positions in the depth-psychological reading of the I Ching. As hexagram 29 and as one of the eight primary trigrams, Kan designates the doubled water trigram: a yang line locked between two yin lines, an image that commentators from Wang Bi to Richard Wilhelm consistently read as the principle of light (reason, the heart, the divine nature) enclosed within danger and darkness. The corpus reveals a spectrum of interpretive pressures. Classical Chinese commentators emphasize the structural logic: the ‘constant’ or ‘repeating’ quality of Kan signals not mere peril but the necessity of habituation to danger, of perseverance through repetition. Wilhelm and Hellmut Wilhelm foreground the psychological and cosmological resonance: Kan as north, midnight, midwinter, melancholia, blood, the pig, the ear—attributes pointing toward the unconscious and its dynamic, instinct-laden depths. Von Franz pushes furthest in a depth-psychological direction, reading Kan as the ‘heart disease,’ the ‘dark passion,’ the creative yet dangerous force of the unconscious. Throughout, Kan’s polar relationship with Li (Cohesion, Brightness, Fire) serves as the structural axis around which the Upper Canon resolves: darkness and light, moon and sun, yin enclosing yang.
Kan is a pit. It can also be interpreted as falling. Wilhelm translates Kan as Abysmal and Blofeld as Abyss. In this book the word Darkness is used.
This passage establishes the primary semantic field of Kan—pit, falling, darkness—and explicitly situates the term within competing translation traditions, making the interpretive stakes of the name visible.
, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998thesis
K’an represents the heart, the soul locked up within the body, the principle of light inclosed in the dark… K’an also means heart disease or difficulty in hearing. It has to do with dark passion and with the dangers of a passionate nature with the dynamic, creative aspects of the unconscious.
Von Franz articulates the depth-psychological reading of Kan most fully, mapping its classical attributes onto the unconscious, the instincts, and the dangerous creativity of the psyche’s shadow regions.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis
The trigram K’an further means the heart. In the heart the divine nature is locked within the natural inclinations and tendencies, and is thus in danger of being engulfed by desires and passions.
Wilhelm’s commentary identifies Kan with the heart as the locus of divine nature imperiled by desire, establishing the psychological interiority that later depth-psychological readers would develop further.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
The trigram K’an further means the heart. In the heart the divine nature is locked within the natural inclinations and tendencies, and is thus in danger of being engulfed by desires and passions.
An independent print occurrence of the same Wilhelmian reading confirming Kan’s identification with the heart and its inner tension between divine nature and passionate engulfment.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
As Sink Hole represents great danger, the term constant [xi] is added to its name. Xi has two meanings here. In one sense it means repetitive, or ‘double’… In another sense, it refers to the fact that when someone is going to undertake something dangerous, he must first constantly practice how to deal with such matters.
Wang Bi’s commentary resolves the doubled-trigram structure of Kan into a double hermeneutic: repetition as compounded peril and repetition as disciplined habituation to danger.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994thesis
The Constant Sink Hole signifies matters that are constantly perilous. To be located here at First Yin at the very bottom of the Sink Hole means that one has entered its drain hole.
Wang Bi’s line-by-line commentary demonstrates how Kan’s spatial imagery—the drain hole at the very bottom—translates structural position into moral and existential consequence.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994thesis
Gorge, K’AN: dangerous place; hole, cavity, hollow; pit, snare, trap, grave, precipice; critical time, test; risky. The ideogram: earth and pit. Gorge is the stream trigram doubled.
Ritsema and Karcher’s lexical analysis unpacks Kan’s ideographic and semantic depth, linking the doubled-stream trigram to a cluster of danger-imagery that includes grave, trap, and critical test.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994thesis
Kan [Water] means pitfall; Li [Cohesion] means attachment… Kan [Water Hole] that of the pig… Kan [Water Hole] like the ear.
Wang Bi’s systematic mapping of each trigram to qualities, animals, and body parts situates Kan within the classical correspondence system: pitfall, pig, and ear as registers of its penetrating, dangerous nature.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
Its animal is the pig, its part of the body the ear that listens into the abyss… K’an is due north, midwinter, and midnight, the time of toil… endurance in danger and trouble will be crowned with success.
Hellmut Wilhelm’s lecture places Kan within its cosmological coordinates—north, midnight, midwinter—and discloses the positive pole of the trigram: perseverance as the way through abyssal danger.
, Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching, 1960supporting
King Wen regarded Qian and Kun as the symbols of Heaven and earth and Kan and Li as the symbols of the sun and the moon… within the yang there is yin, and within the yin there is yang.
Huang situates Kan and Li as the second great polarity of the Upper Canon, reading their pairing as the structural embodiment of the yin-within-yang principle at the cosmological level.
, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998thesis
Kan represents the darkness of the moon, Li represents the brightness of the sun… The canon begins with the interplay of Heaven and Earth; ends with the ceaseless cycle of darkness to brightness.
Huang frames the Upper Canon’s closure in terms of Kan and Li’s alternating cycle, establishing Kan’s symbolic identity as lunar darkness within an endless cosmological rhythm.
, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998supporting
By growing used to what is dangerous, a man can easily allow it to become part of him. He is familiar with it and grows used to evil. With this he has lost the right way, and misfortune is the natural result.
Wilhelm’s commentary on the first line warns that Kan’s repetitive danger carries a psychological hazard: habituation to peril can slide into moral corruption rather than disciplined endurance.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
Kan here indicates a pit. One whose superiority knows no limits will encounter a pitfall. Once so entrapped, there is sure to be something to catch hold of.
The sequential logic of the hexagrams shows Kan as the necessary consequence of unchecked greatness, and simultaneously as the precondition for clinging (Li)—entrapment converting into the basis of attachment.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
Because of its penetrating quality K’an, when applied to a carriage, is made to symbolize a broken-down vehicle that serves as a wagon. Penetration is suggested by the penetrating line in the middle wedged in between the two weak lines.
Wilhelm identifies the structural key of the trigram—a strong central yang line between two yin lines—as the source of Kan’s attribute of penetration, which then radiates through its varied correspondences.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
Song [Contention] consists of strength in the upper trigram [Qian] and danger in the lower trigram [Kan (Sink Hole)]. To be in danger but still have strength, this is what Song means.
Wang Bi deploys Kan as the defining element of Contention: danger in the lower position, met by strength above, producing the hexagram’s characteristic tension between legal conflict and inner peril.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
Gorge, K’AN, brings toiling, difficult but worthy labor. It is represented… With the struggle of Force, CH’IEN, comes heavy labor and isolation.
Ritsema and Karcher’s Universal Compass situates Kan as the complement of Force (Qian), framing its dangerous, toilsome quality as the necessary shadow-work that accompanies creative striving.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting
Third Yang, Top Yin’s resonate line, but as inside the Adversity hexagram and/or the upper trigram, Kan (Sink Hole).
A structural notation identifying Kan as the upper trigram in hexagram 39 (Adversity), illustrating how Kan’s presence inflects the reading of line relationships within other hexagrams.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994aside
It gets into the water because it is a weak line at the top of K’an, water, danger. While crossing the water it turns back and so incurs the danger of drowning.
In the context of hexagram 63 (After Completion), Kan as the water-danger trigram explains the final line’s image of a fox submerging its head—the exhaustion of successful crossing reversed into peril.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950aside