Trigram
☵ Water
坎Kǎn · The Abysmal
- Quality
- dangerous
- Family
- the middle son
- Animal
- pig
- Body
- ear
- Direction
- north
- Season
- winter
Water is the trigram of depth. One solid line in the middle, enclosed by two broken lines. Wilhelm calls it The Abysmal: what you cannot see to the bottom of, and must therefore handle with care.
The strong inside the soft
The image from nature is water flowing through a ravine. It falls, fills every hollow, and flows on as soon as the hollow is full. Water clings to nothing and keeps to no shape, but it never loses itself either. It stays water, in a stream, in a well and in the sea.
The lines show why this image is linked with danger. The yang line stands in the middle, shut in between two yin lines. The strong is inside, the soft around it. From outside it looks pliable and open, but in the middle lies a core you cannot see. That is how a ravine works: the edges give way, the depth is invisible. The quality tradition gives it is therefore dangerous. Wilhelm also points out that this enclosed line stands for what is most essential inside: the heart, the soul within the body. Danger and inner core belong together here.
How Water shows up
Water is the situation in which you do not know how deep it goes. A financial setback that turns out bigger than you thought. A relationship in which you keep running into the same mistake. A stretch of low mood where you cannot see the end. Water also belongs to the person who feels a lot and shows little of it, or to someone who holds up under pressure simply by carrying on.
The advice of the trigram is not to run from the danger, but to behave the way water does. Water keeps flowing, fills what is empty, and stays reliable in its own nature. If you stay true to what matters to you in a hard time and keep going step by step, you come through. Panic and haste only make the ravine deeper.
The middle son and the ear
In the family, Water is the middle son. As with the other sons, the single yang line gives him his character, and here it stands in the middle. Between Thunder, who starts the movement, and Mountain, who brings it to rest, Water is the one who does the hardest part of the journey: not the first to leave, not the last to arrive, but the one right in the middle of it.
The animal is the pig, a creature that lives in mud and water. In the body Water is the ear: the hollow that listens inward, and in the old imagery also the seat of unrest and held-back worry. In the arrangement of King Wen, the later heaven Wilhelm writes about, Water stands in the north and belongs to winter. It is the cold, dark point of the year, the time of toil, when everything withdraws inward and waits.
Water below, Water above
When Water is at the bottom of your hexagram, the danger is in you or in the foundation of the situation: an uncertainty, a restlessness, something you cannot yet oversee. In hexagram 6, Conflict, Water lies beneath Heaven. Inside there is tension, outside a strength that wants to go the other way. Heaven pulls upward, water sinks down, and the two drift apart. The advice there is not to push a conflict to the very end.
When Water is at the top, the danger lies outside you, in the circumstances. In hexagram 5, Waiting, Water stands above Heaven: the clouds are already in the sky, but the rain has not yet fallen. There is strength inside, only the situation does not yet allow action. The lesson is to wait calmly, look after yourself well and not let yourself be rushed.
When Water doubles itself, in hexagram 29, The Abysmal, there is danger within and without. The way out stays the same: keep flowing, and stay yourself.
Hexagrams with Water below
- 4
Youthful Folly - 6
Conflict - 7
The Army - 29
The Abysmal - 40
Deliverance - 47
Oppression - 59
Dispersion - 64
Before Completion
Hexagrams with Water above
- 3
Difficulty at the Beginning - 5
Waiting - 8
Holding Together - 29
The Abysmal - 39
Obstruction - 48
The Well - 60
Limitation - 63
After Completion