坤 · kūn · ☷
Earth
Earth follows. It is the belly, the cow, the mother; cloth and the cooking pot, the great cart and the crowd.
- Quality
- Receptive devotion
- Image
- earth
- In the family
- the mother
- Direction
- southwest
- Season
- late summer
In a reading
Kun brings receptivity, patience and support to your reading. It's a time to go along rather than lead, to listen and hold things up, without losing yourself in what others want.
The image
Three open lines, one above another. This is earth: what receives, carries and makes things grow. The Shuogua (說卦) gives it the quality 順, to follow: to go along with heaven's push and give it a shape.
Symbols
- Family: the mother. With Qian, the father, it gives rise to the three sons and three daughters.
- Body: the belly (腹), where things are held and nourished.
- Animal: the cow (牛), patient and strong under a load.
It's also linked to cloth, the cooking pot, the great cart, the crowd, and evenness.
Direction and season
In the Later Heaven arrangement, which tradition credits to King Wen, Kun sits in the southwest, in late summer, when the land ripens its crops. The Shuogua says 致役乎坤, service is given in Kun: the earth works to feed everything. In the Earlier Heaven arrangement, said to be Fu Xi's, Kun lies in the north, at the bottom, facing Qian in the south.
In a hexagram
As the lower trigram, Kun is a ground ready to receive. As the upper trigram, it's an open setting that welcomes, or one that asks for patience. Above heaven it makes hexagram 11, Well-Being, where heaven and earth meet; beneath heaven, hexagram 12, Decline. Doubled, earth over earth is hexagram 2, Passivity: six yin lines, wide open.
To see all eight side by side, read the guide to the trigrams.