The Mountain Trigram (Gèn 艮)

Traditional associations

Attribute: Still and stopping
Family role: The youngest son
Direction: Northeast
Element: Earth

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 Gèn

Gèn has its single unbroken line at the top, closing the figure. It is Zhèn turned upside down: the same one solid line, but arrived instead of starting. Where Zhèn is open above, Gèn is shut, and that one difference carries the whole distinction between them.

The mountain is the image, and stillness the quality traditionally attached to it. The stillness meant is a stop that holds rather than a rest between efforts. In the Shuogua ordering of the three single-yang trigrams by the height of that line, Gèn is the youngest son.

The doubled figure is hexagram 52. Flip every line and you get Duì, Lake, its opposite, open at the top where Gèn is closed. A hexagram with Gèn above suggests a limit already in place, and with Gèn below something resting on ground that will not move.

The 15 hexagrams built from Gèn

Eight place it in the lower half and eight in the upper. Hexagram 52 appears in both, because it is Gèn 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.