The Lake Trigram (Duì 兌)

Traditional associations

Attribute: Joyous and open
Family role: The youngest daughter
Direction: West
Element: Metal

The direction follows the Later Heaven arrangement and the element is a later Five Phases correspondence; other diagrams and interpretive traditions organize them differently. How the eight trigrams fit together.

Reading Duì

Duì has its single broken line at the top, so the figure is solid underneath and open above. It is Xùn inverted and the opposite of Gèn in every line, which places it exactly: firm at the base, with nothing closing it off.

A lake or a marsh is the image, standing water with an open surface. Joy is the quality traditionally attached to it, and the connection runs through that openness: a surface that takes in what falls on it and gives something back. Its yin line at the top makes it the youngest daughter in the Shuogua scheme.

Doubled it becomes hexagram 58. Turn it over and the broken line drops to the bottom, giving Xùn, Wind. In a hexagram, Duì above suggests something receptive at the point where it meets the world, whatever is holding it up underneath.

The 15 hexagrams built from Duì

Eight place it in the lower half and eight in the upper. Hexagram 58 appears in both, because it is Duì doubled.

As the lower trigram

lines 1–3, the inner or beginning half

As the upper trigram

lines 4–6, the outer half

Browse all 64 hexagrams, or cast your own reading with the three-coin method.