Monogram for Earth

It represents the human value between heaven and earth.

The Tai Xuan Jing is a Han-era Chinese divination classic; its first draft was completed in 2 BCE. It uses three line values to build figures that readers interpret through judgments and commentaries.

Later witnesses include editions with commentaries from the Jin dynasty and Northern Song period. Western translations of the work also print its three monograms in running text.

Why is 𝌀 called monogram for earth?

Unicode matched its English label to the wrong line value.

Unicode’s code chart says this mark is usually associated with the human value, not earth. It explains that the English names for this monogram and five related digrams were matched to the wrong line interpretations. For the Tai Xuan Jing, human is the clearer label.

The older Yijing, or Book of Changes, uses two line values, yin and yang; the Tai Xuan Jing adds a third. The values combine into digrams and a set of 81 four-line figures called tetragrams.