Trigrams

A trigram is an entity that represents a quality of elemental energy. It consistes of three lines. There are two different systems that represent the set of all the trigrams: the Before Heaven system, attributed to Fu Hsi and the Later Heaven system, attributed to King Wen, see figure . Of the two, the latter is almost the only one referred in today's I Ching literature.

**Figure:** Main systems for trigram representation.
$\includegraphics[% width=1.0\columnwidth, keepaspectratio]{fig/system.eps}$

Some important trigram attributes are: image, quality and family. See table

Table: Trigram known attributes.

Trigram	Name	Image	Quality	Family
1.	Ch'ien/ Qian	Heaven	Creative	Father
2.	K'un / Kun	Earth	Receptive	Mother
3.	Chen / Zhen	Thunder	Initiating	Eldest son
4.	Sun / Sun	Wind or Wood	Penetrating	Eldest daughter
5.	Li / Li	Fire	Clinging	Middle daughter
6.	K'an / Kan	Water	Dangerous	Middle son
7.	Tui / Dui	Lake	Joyous	Youngest daughter
8.	Ken / Gen	Mountain	Still	Youngest son

Jean Pierre Charalambos 2004-06-01