# Kan 坎: Water

Canonical page: https://thefreeiching.com/trigrams/kan
Last updated: 2026-10-07

- **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](https://thefreeiching.com/library/3)
- [5 Waiting](https://thefreeiching.com/library/5)
- [8 Holding Together](https://thefreeiching.com/library/8)
- [29 The Abysmal](https://thefreeiching.com/library/29)
- [39 Obstruction](https://thefreeiching.com/library/39)
- [48 The Well](https://thefreeiching.com/library/48)
- [60 Limitation](https://thefreeiching.com/library/60)
- [63 After Completion](https://thefreeiching.com/library/63)

## Kan as the lower trigram

- [4 Youthful Folly](https://thefreeiching.com/library/4)
- [6 Conflict](https://thefreeiching.com/library/6)
- [7 The Army](https://thefreeiching.com/library/7)
- [29 The Abysmal](https://thefreeiching.com/library/29)
- [40 Deliverance](https://thefreeiching.com/library/40)
- [47 Oppression](https://thefreeiching.com/library/47)
- [59 Dispersion](https://thefreeiching.com/library/59)
- [64 Before Completion](https://thefreeiching.com/library/64)

See also the [eight trigrams](https://thefreeiching.com/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](https://thefreeiching.com/data) are licensed CC BY 4.0.*

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Source: The Free I Ching (https://thefreeiching.com/trigrams/kan). The I Ching is a tool for reflection, not a prediction. Nothing here forecasts events or replaces professional advice.