The sixty-four hexagrams

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Frequently asked questions

What order are the 64 hexagrams in?

The received text uses the King Wen sequence, traditionally attributed to the founder of the Zhou dynasty. It is not numerical or binary; the hexagrams are arranged in pairs, each figure followed by its own inversion where that produces a different figure, and by its line-for-line opposite in the eight cases where inversion changes nothing. Other orderings exist, including Fu Xi's binary sequence, but King Wen is what the classic itself follows.

Why are hexagram lines read from the bottom up?

The figure is understood as growing, like a plant or a situation developing over time, so the earliest stage sits at the foot and the latest at the top. That is also why the first line is called 'the beginning' rather than 'the first' and the sixth is called 'above' rather than 'the sixth' in the classical texts.

What is the difference between the Judgment and the Image?

The Judgment belongs to the oldest layer of the book and gives the hexagram's oracular statement, often only a few characters. The Image is a later commentary that reads the two trigrams as a picture and draws a piece of conduct from it, almost always beginning with what the noble person does in response. The Judgment tells you what the situation is; the Image tells you how to behave in it.

Do I read all six line texts?

No. Line texts are read only for lines the cast marked as moving, which means a six or a nine. A reading with one moving line uses that line's text; a reading with none uses only the Judgment and the Image. The remaining lines still matter structurally, since they determine whether the figure is balanced, but they do not speak.

What is a nuclear hexagram?

Take lines two, three and four of a hexagram as a lower trigram, and lines three, four and five as an upper one, and you get a new figure hidden inside the original. It is read as the inner constitution of the situation, or what is really going on beneath the surface. Only sixteen of the sixty-four ever appear as a nuclear figure, and taking the nuclear of a nuclear repeatedly always ends at hexagram 1, 2, 63 or 64.

Which hexagram is the most favourable?

Hexagram 15, Modesty, is the only one in which all six line texts read favourably, and commentators have remarked on this for centuries. Hexagrams 1, 11, 14 and 46 are also strongly positive. The classic is not a scale of good and bad outcomes, though, and several difficult hexagrams contain its most useful counsel.

Why does the book end with 'Before Completion'?

Hexagram 63, After Completion, is the only figure in which every line sits in its correct place, and it would be an obvious ending. The classic puts hexagram 64, Before Completion, after it instead, with every line in the wrong place and a fox halfway across a river. The arrangement is deliberate: the book declines to end on a settled state.