乾 · qián · ☰
Heaven
Heaven is strength. It is the head, the horse, the father: round as jade, cold as ice.
- Quality
- Creative strength
- Image
- heaven
- In the family
- the father
- Direction
- northwest
- Season
- late autumn and early winter
In a reading
Qian brings energy, initiative and the stamina for a long effort to your reading. Take the lead and keep at it, but don't let strength harden into stubbornness.
The image
Three solid lines stacked one on another, with no gap anywhere. This is heaven: the sky that turns and never tires. The Shuogua (說卦), one of the Ten Wings, sums up its quality in a single word, 健: strength that keeps going.
Symbols
- Family: the father. With Kun, the mother, it gives rise to the three sons and three daughters.
- Body: the head (首), which leads the rest.
- Animal: the horse (馬), built to run far.
The same text also ties it to roundness, jade, metal, cold and ice.
Direction and season
In the Later Heaven arrangement, which tradition credits to King Wen, Qian sits in the northwest, where autumn ends and winter begins. The Shuogua says 戰乎乾, they battle in Qian: this is where yang and yin push against each other. In the Earlier Heaven arrangement, said to be Fu Xi's, Qian holds the south, at the very top, facing Kun in the north.
In a hexagram
As the lower trigram, Qian lays down a base of energy and resolve. As the upper trigram, it's a force arriving from outside or from above. Beneath earth it makes hexagram 11, Well-Being; above earth, hexagram 12, Decline. Doubled, Qian over Qian is hexagram 1, Activity: six yang lines, strength with nothing held back.
To see all eight side by side, read the guide to the trigrams.