Trigram ☵

Kan 坎: Water

Symbol

☵ 坎

Natural image

Water

Quality

the abysmal, danger

Family role

Middle son

Lines, bottom to top

010 (1 = solid yang, 0 = broken yin)

A trigram is a stack of three lines. Each hexagram is two trigrams: one below (the lower, inner or earlier situation) and one above (the upper, outer or later situation). Kan appears in sixteen of the sixty-four hexagrams, eight times as the upper trigram and eight as the lower.

Kan 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

Kan as the lower trigram

• 4 Youthful Folly
• 6 Conflict
• 7 The Army
• 29 The Abysmal
• 40 Deliverance
• 47 Oppression
• 59 Dispersion
• 64 Before Completion

See also the eight trigrams.

Cite this page

The Free I Ching. "Kan 坎: Water." https://thefreeiching.com/trigrams/kan (updated 2026-10-07).

The I Ching is a tool for reflection, not a prediction. Nothing here forecasts events or replaces professional advice. Short quotations with a link back are welcome. Please do not republish a page in full. The open data files at /data are licensed CC BY 4.0.

Updated October 7, 2026. Markdown version