Trigram for Water

It frames water as a difficult passage, not just an element.

Kan's solid center line is yang; the two broken lines above and below it are yin. A trigram is this three-line figure; two trigrams combine into a six-line hexagram used for divination. Classical commentary also links Kan with ditches, ravines, and concealed things.

The trigram has a layered history

Traditional Chinese accounts credit the legendary figure Fu Xi with creating the eight trigrams; diviners pair two trigrams to form a six-line hexagram used to interpret questions. A Warring States-period bamboo manuscript called Shifa records divination with all eight, while later commentaries broadened their symbolic readings. A silk manuscript of the I Ching from a Han tomb at Mawangdui, dated to 168 BCE, arranges hexagrams by their constituent trigrams in an order different from the received text.