坎 · kǎn · ☵
Water
Water sinks. It is the ear, the pig, the middle son; the moon, the bow and the wheel, the thing that hides.
- Quality
- Danger that flows
- Image
- water
- In the family
- the middle son
- Direction
- north
- Season
- winter
In a reading
Kan brings a risk, a difficulty or something you can't fully see yet. Don't freeze out of fear or rush in blind: move like water, steadily, without losing your center.
The image
One solid line between two open ones: a firm center surrounded by what gives way. This is water running along the bottom of a ravine, and also the moon. The Shuogua (說卦) gives it the quality 陷, to fall into a pit: danger, and the way through it too, since water never stops and fills every hollow before moving on.
Symbols
- Family: the middle son, because the yang line sits in the center.
- Body: the ears (耳).
- Animal: the pig (豕).
It's also linked to ditches and channels, hidden things, the bow and the wheel, worry, the moon and the thief.
Direction and season
In the Later Heaven arrangement, Kan sits in the north, in winter. The Shuogua says 勞乎坎, in Kan is toil: after the year's labor, all things draw back in to rest. In the Earlier Heaven arrangement, Kan sits in the west, facing Li in the east.
In a hexagram
As the lower trigram, Kan is a risk or an unease inside. As the upper trigram, it's a danger up ahead that has to be crossed. Above heaven it makes hexagram 5, Inaction, waiting at the water's edge; beneath heaven, hexagram 6, Conflict. Doubled, water over water is hexagram 29, Water: one danger after another, crossed by keeping a steady center.
To see all eight side by side, read the guide to the trigrams.