EN (English)
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One of the eight trigrams
Water
坎 · Kǎn
A yang line held between two yin lines, strength enclosed by yielding. Kǎn is water running in a ravine: dangerous, deep, and completely reliable about where it goes.
danger
depth
persistence
trust
- Lines, bottom to top
- Broken · solid · broken
- Image
- Water, the abyss
- Attribute
- Dangerous, flowing
- Family role
- The middle son
- Element
- Water
- Direction
- North (Later Heaven)
- Season
- Winter
- Animal
- Pig
- Body
- The ear
What it means
Kǎn is the trigram of the pit, and the classic never softens that. The strong line sits trapped between two open ones, and the situations it describes are ones you are already inside rather than ones you might avoid.
What redeems it is water's behaviour. Water fills each hollow before it goes on, never skips a step, and never pretends the ground is other than it is. From this the Image commentary draws the trigram's whole counsel: repeated danger is survived by repeated correctness, doing the same right thing each time rather than looking for the clever escape. Hexagram 29 attaches sincerity to the trapped middle line, and makes it the reason the situation eventually opens.
Kǎn also carries depth in the plain sense. It is the trigram of what is hidden below the surface, of the ear rather than the eye, of what is learned by listening in the dark. As the middle son it takes Qián's strength into the interior, where it is least visible and most tested.
In a reading
Kǎn marks the part of a question that is genuinely difficult. Not inconvenient: difficult. Its advice is to stop looking for the exit and start being scrupulous, because in a gorge the only route out is the one the water is already taking.
When it appears above, the danger is ahead and can be prepared for. Below, you are standing in it.
Where it appears
As the upper trigram: 3. Difficulty at the Beginning, 5. Waiting, 8. Holding Together, 29. The Abysmal, 39. Obstruction, 48. The Well, 60. Limitation, 63. After Completion.
As the lower trigram: 4. Youthful Folly, 6. Conflict, 7. The Army, 29. The Abysmal, 40. Deliverance, 47. Oppression, 59. Dispersion, 64. Before Completion.
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