The Shuogua: the I Ching's trigram correspondences

The Shuogua (說卦傳, "Discussion of the Trigrams") is the Ten Wing that tells you what each of the eight trigrams stands for. It gives each one a quality (Qian is strong, Kun is yielding), a family role, a part of the body, an animal, a direction, and then long lists of further images. Almost every symbolic reading of a hexagram, from the Tuan commentary to Plum Blossom numerology, draws on it — and it is also the Wing whose lists are easiest to over-use.

What the Shuogua contains

The text is short and mixed. Its opening chapters speak of the sages making the Changes "to follow the order of nature and destiny." Then come two arrangements of the trigrams that became the Early Heaven and Later Heaven diagrams, a set of short definitions, and finally long catalogues of images for each trigram. Like the rest of the Ten Wings, tradition credited it to Confucius; modern scholars generally place it in the Warring States or Han, and the final catalogues look like collected material rather than a composed essay.

The core correspondences

The definitions are the part every reader should know. Each is a single phrase in the original:

• Quality. 乾，健也。坤，順也。震，動也。巽，入也。坎，陷也。離，麗也。艮，止也。兌，說也. Qian is strength, Kun yielding, Zhen movement, Xun penetration, Kan falling into danger, Li clinging (and so brightness), Gen stopping, Dui joy.
• Animal. Qian the horse, Kun the ox, Zhen the dragon, Xun the fowl, Kan the pig, Li the pheasant, Gen the dog, Dui the sheep.
• Body. Qian the head, Kun the belly, Zhen the foot, Xun the thigh, Kan the ear, Li the eye, Gen the hand, Dui the mouth.
• Nature. Heaven, earth, thunder, wind (and wood), water, fire (and sun), mountain, lake.

The family

The most useful single passage explains the trigrams as a family. Qian is heaven and so is called the father; Kun is earth and so the mother. Then: 震一索而得男，故謂之長男 — Zhen is the first "seeking" and obtains a son, so it is the eldest son. The rule is simple: in each child trigram, the one line that differs from the other two decides the gender, and its position decides the rank.

• Eldest son ☳ Zhen, middle son ☵ Kan, youngest son ☶ Gen — one yang line at the bottom, middle, top.
• Eldest daughter ☴ Xun, middle daughter ☲ Li, youngest daughter ☱ Dui — one yin line at the bottom, middle, top.

The directions

The passage beginning 帝出乎震 ("the Lord comes forth in Zhen") walks around the year and the compass: things come forth in Zhen, the east; are set in order in Xun, the southeast; see one another in Li, the south; and so on round to Gen in the northeast, where things are completed and begin again. Not every direction is stated outright — for Kun and Dui the text speaks of earth and of mid-autumn, and southwest and west are inferred from the circle. This is the arrangement used by the Later Heaven bagua, and the one most compasses and feng shui charts follow. The other passage, 天地定位，山澤通氣，雷風相薄，水火不相射, pairs the trigrams as opposites and became the Early Heaven order.

How readers use the correspondences

The point of the lists is not to decorate a hexagram but to read it. The commentaries already do this:

• Hexagram 31, Xian, Influence, is ☱ the youngest daughter over ☶ the youngest son. Its Tuan reads it as courtship: 止而說，男下女, stillness and joy, the man placing himself below the woman.
• Hexagram 49, Ge and Hexagram 38, Kui both pair two daughters, ☲ and ☱. The Tuan of each says they live together but their wills do not go the same way — hence revolution in one case and estrangement in the other.
• Hexagram 54, Gui Mei, the Marrying Maiden, is ☳ the eldest son over ☱ the youngest daughter: a mismatched match that sets the tone of the whole hexagram.
• Hexagram 50, Ding, the Cauldron, is ☲ fire over ☴ wood: wood feeding a flame, the image of cooking that gives the hexagram its name.

In your own readings the same move helps when a hexagram's text feels abstract. Ask which family members or qualities are meeting. "Strength below, joy above," "the eldest son moving under the stillness of the youngest" — these give you a concrete scene you can map onto people and forces in your question. We go further in reading the trigram images, and the trigram table lists the core correspondences side by side.

The image-and-number tradition used the lists far more aggressively. Han commentators such as Yu Fan collected extra images beyond those in the Shuogua to explain every word of a line text. Plum Blossom numerology uses the catalogues to read what a hexagram says about objects, people and places around a question.

The limits

The catalogues are generous to the point of contradiction. Qian alone is the sovereign, the father, jade, metal, cold, ice, deep red, a good horse, an old horse, a lean horse and tree fruit. With enough lists, any trigram can be made to mean almost anything, and a reader who goes looking for a sign will find one.

Wang Bi made exactly this complaint. In his Zhouyi Lüeli he wrote: 義苟在健，何必馬乎？類苟在順，何必牛乎？ — "If the meaning lies in strength, why must it be a horse? If the category lies in yielding, why must it be an ox?" His point was that the images serve the meaning, not the other way round. His school, the meaning-and-principle tradition, kept the core qualities and set aside the hunt for images.

A balanced practice takes something from both sides:

• Trust the core first. Quality, family and nature are used throughout the classic and its commentaries. The long catalogues are secondary.
• Pick one layer per reading. If you read the trigrams as family members, don't switch to body parts mid-sentence because it gives a more dramatic answer.
• Let the image serve the text. The Judgment and line texts come first; the trigrams explain them, not replace them.

Putting it into practice

When you cast a hexagram, name its two trigrams by quality ("danger below, stillness above") and by family ("the middle son under the youngest son"). Write one sentence about what that scene looks like in your situation. Then read the Judgment and see whether the picture and the words agree. If they pull apart, follow the words, and keep the image as a question rather than an answer.