Trigram

☴ Wind

巽Xùn · The Gentle

Quality: penetrating
Family: the eldest daughter
Animal: cock
Body: thighs
Direction: southeast
Season: turn of spring into summer

Wind is the trigram of gentle, lasting influence. Two solid lines at the top, one broken line beneath them. Wilhelm calls it The Gentle. It works not through force, but through persistence.

The soft that penetrates

The trigram has two images from nature: wind and wood. Wind gets in everywhere, through every crack, and changes a landscape not all at once but over years. Wood, the tree, does the same under the ground: its roots slowly work their way into the earth and find a path between the stones. Both images say the same thing: a gentle force that gets in everywhere because it never stops.

In the lines, the yin line is at the bottom, beneath two yang lines. The soft lies at the base and clears the way; the strong follows behind it. It is the reverse of Lake, where the soft line lies on top. In Wind the softness sits underneath, as a way of entering. The quality that belongs to it is penetrating: not with a crash, but with a movement you only notice once it has already happened.

How Wind shows up

Wind is the adviser who never plays the boss and still has influence everywhere. The teacher who does not impose an idea, but explains it so often and so clearly that it comes alive by itself. A habit you build slowly, ten minutes a day, until it runs on its own. The culture of an organisation, which nobody ever wrote down and which still shapes everything.

The strength of Wind is patience with a direction. A wind that keeps changing sides changes nothing. So the trigram says: choose a goal and keep working on it, gently but steadily. The shadow side is indecision. If you adapt to everything, in the end you no longer know where you want to go yourself. Tradition therefore also links Wind with going back and forth, and with doubt.

The eldest daughter and the cock

In the family, Wind is the eldest daughter. The daughters get their character from their one yin line alongside two yang lines, and the position of that line sets the order. In Wind it stands at the bottom, in the first place: so this is the eldest. Just as Thunder is the first son, Wind is the first daughter, and in the hexagrams the two often form a pair.

The animal is the cock, whose voice announces the day and carries everywhere. In the body the thighs belong to it, which carry the body and set it moving without drawing attention to themselves. In the arrangement of King Wen, the later heaven Wilhelm writes about, Wind stands in the southeast and belongs to the turn of spring into summer. That is the time when everything that has come up takes on its full form and finds its place.

Wind below, Wind above

When Wind is at the bottom of your hexagram, a quiet, steady growth is at work in you. In hexagram 46, Pushing Upward, Wind lies beneath Earth: the wood grows upward within the earth. A tree does not hurry and skips no step, but it grows a little every day and so keeps getting higher. The image advises working with dedication and in small steps; progress then comes of itself.

When Wind is at the top, the gentle influence works outward, on others and on your surroundings. In hexagram 53, Development, Wind stands above Mountain: a tree on a mountain. It grows slowly, but stands firm and can be seen from far away. It is about development that needs time and lasts because of it, like a good reputation you build over years.

When Wind doubles itself, in hexagram 57, The Gentle, wind follows wind. The lesson there is to keep working in again and again with a clear intention, until your influence becomes a matter of course.

Hexagrams with Wind below

Hexagrams with Wind above

The other trigrams

Consult the oracle The Eight Trigrams: The Alphabet of the I Ching