Qian as the axis

Looking at a reading the other day, I found myself revisiting (after a gap of ten years) the idea of qian, heaven – the name of Hexagram 1 – as a central axis. It’s a concept that shows up in many ways…

What does qian mean?

The character qian is now simply the name of the hexagram (and trigram): it means pure yang, heaven and its influence. (More on that in a moment…)

Here’s what I’ve gleaned from Harmen, LiSe and assorted dictionaries about the character qian…

Qian 乾 breaks down into two component parts:

• 倝 gan, meaning dry, dried or drought
• 乙 yi, which is the second heavenly stem and means ‘second’ generally

Some say that 乙 originally represented a germinating sprout, full of potential energy; others say that it’s originally a small stream of water. The Pleco dictionary says this is a ‘distinguishing mark’ that contributes no particular meaning to the character; Stephen Field says the whole character’s meaning ‘is derived from the lower right-hand element in the graph depicting the “twist” of a newly emerged sprout.’ The decomposition of Chinese characters is not an exact science…

But it’s the other part of the character that brings me back to qian as axis. Gan, ‘dried’, breaks down in turn into two components:

• the rising sun, sunrise
• yan 㫃 , a flag flying in the wind

Harmen dug up some very interesting nuggets about the flag: how the flagpole would be set up in the centre of the town or village, with all the houses facing towards it, and how it might also act as the gnomon of a sundial.

So the flagpole is the centre: we build our settlement around it; we look to it to orient ourselves. In battle or on the march we gather around it and look to it for orders; its bright blazon shows who we are.

What is the ‘influence of heaven’?

This definition of qian can seem very abstract. What’s ‘heaven’ and how does it influence us? Once we’ve cleared out the serried ranks of angels and archangels cluttering our Western imaginations, what’s left?

There is a Chinese concept of the ‘will of heaven’ that’s not unrecognisably different from the Christian idea of a ‘divine will’. But qian is not just ‘heaven’ but also the firmament: where sun, moon and stars follow their courses. (Remember the rising sun is part of the character.)

Qian is made of closed, firm lines. Nothing whatsoever can be done to it. (Unlike the open lines of kun, earth, which can be broken open by plough/roots/rivers, excavated, piled into ramparts, baked into bricks…) Those parallel, unbroken lines remind me of long-exposure photos of the night sky:

Quick question: what time is it now, as you’re reading this?

You probably glanced reflexively at the corner of your screen to find out. A decade or so ago, you might have looked at your watch (confession: I still do), and I suppose Grannie would have looked at the clock on the mantelpiece to see when it was time to get started on supper. But not so many generations ago, your reflexive glance would have been to the sky, to see the angle of the sun.

You need to know what time it is because you understand and order your life in days and nights. You also order it by seasons – especially if you’re a farmer – and to know accurately what time of year it is, you look at the night sky.

This is the story traced through the line texts of Hexagram 1, or at least part of it: the dragon constellation that is submerged in line 1, when it’s too early to sow, and begins its journey across the sky as work in the fields begins.

It’s good to appreciate how much this dragon does not come with ‘pause’ or ‘fast forward’ buttons. (Every year without fail, Facebook gardening groups are full of pictures of forlorn, leggy seedlings that were sown too soon and light-deprived.) Qian is what is so.

The sun and stars are for time what the flagstaff is for space: what our lives revolve around; how we orient ourselves; where we start from; how we know what to do.

Sequence reflections

Is this characteristic of qian reflected in the Sequence?

Well, it’s literally where we start from – the first hexagram. And the trigrams qian and kun are mostly concentrated towards the beginning of the book: in eight of the first 10 hexagram pairs, and none of the final 10.

I’ve started talking about qian and kun together because that’s how they work. Every hexagram pattern that includes the trigram qian is adjacent to a pattern with trigram kun – most often followed by it, as hexagram 1 is by hexagram 2. Sun and stars only ‘move’ because we have a place to stand to watch them; the flagstaff is planted in the earth.

Here’s the complete list of hexagrams with qian as a component trigram:

• 1
• 5/6
• 9/10
• 11/12
• 13/14
• 25/26
• 33/34
• 43/44

As we emerge from the dense cluster of heaven and earth trigrams from hexagram 5 to 16, a pattern appears: 13-16, 23-26, 33-36 and 43-46 are all qian and kun pairs. (23-26 are the exception to the rule that qian comes first.) How about imagining these as the flagstaff planted in the earth at the centre of each group of ten hexagrams?

When qian and kun are combined into a single hexagram, in hexagrams 11/12, they become the axis of what Scott Davis dubbed the first ‘big/little’ set of hexagrams. Have a look –

(I’ve turned the hexagrams on their sides so you can more easily see each single pattern that forms an inverse pair of hexagrams.)

11/12 is like a mirror, with two qian hexagrams closest to it and two kun hexagrams beyond them. Also, all the hexagrams in here are complementary/ opposite to one another: 7/8 to 13/14, 9/10 to 15/16, and 11/12, of course, are a complementary pair.

What does this matter?

Sequence patterns are satisfying in their own way, but are they worth noticing? In other words, does this make any difference in readings?

All the reflections, shared themes and stories of 11/12 and their surroundings most certainly do, but they’re way beyond the scope of a blog post. You can find much more about them in Exploring the Sequence, which is part of the Change Circle Library.

As for the idea that each decade of hexagrams might have its own qian-kun ‘flagstaff’ planted at its centre: this is one I’m just starting to play with. You can do the same – in general, from your experience with the hexagrams, and especially as they come up in your own readings. That’s always the real proof of the pudding. See what tastes good!

We might experiment with thinking of the earth hexagrams (7/8, 15/16, 35/36, 45/46) as responses to the challenge of the heaven ones (5/6, 13/14, 33/34, 43/44). (I know that begs the question of what to do with 23/24-25/26.) If the Army is gathered in response to the obstruction of Hexagram 6, then can we also imagine Seeking Union as a response to, or an expression of, Waiting? How about hexagrams 35 and 36 as historically grounded, real life responses to the question of whether to Retreat or stand firm?

…and so on. When I next receive hexagrams from these neighbouring pairs for related readings, I’ll certainly sit up and take notice – and look for the flagstaff.

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