Meaning
One of the eight doubled hexagrams, and in Legge's English the Judgment says so first: "Khan, here repeated". 坎 means a pit or a hollow in the ground, and its trigram is water in the ravine, a single strong line held between two weak ones. Doubled, it is danger behind danger, a gorge inside a gorge. The Judgment does not soften that. It points instead to what carries a person through: sincerity, a mind that sees its way, and action true to it.
The Image is water that keeps flowing, filling every hollow before it moves on, and the superior man is told to be as constant in his conduct and his teaching. In our own reading, 坎 is about how to be in a hard place: not by leaping out of it, but by going on as water does. Jung's foreword of 1949 tells that this was the second hexagram he drew when he asked the oracle about its own introduction to the West.
The lines
The lines go down into the pit and partly out again. The first enters a cavern within the double ravine; the second, in the full danger, gets "a little (of the deliverance) that he seeks", in Legge's words; the third meets a ravine whether it comes or goes, and is told not to act. The fourth is the hexagram's most human scene: a plain meal, a jug of wine and a basket of rice in earthenware, offered simply through a window. The fifth is water that has not yet reached the brim; the top line is bound with cords among thorns.
Within 坎 lies 頤, hexagram 27; its pair and opposite is 離, hexagram 30, fire.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 坎 when the year, month and day leave 6 on eight, which puts 坎 water above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 6, which puts 坎 water below. Which line moves depends on what the whole total leaves on six, and each line turns the figure into a different hexagram:
- Line 1 (初六) moving: becomes 60 節 Jié, Measure
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 8 比 Bǐ, Alliance
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 48 井 Jǐng, The Well
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 47 困 Kùn, Confinement
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 7 師 Shī, The Army
- Line 6 (上六) moving: becomes 59 渙 Huàn, Scattering
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 27 頤 Yí, Nourishment. Everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour has the same cast, so the figure describes a moment, not a person.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Trigram virtues (Shuogua, chapter 7)
- 坎 sinking, perilous, doubled, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- middle son, doubled sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- ears and pig, doubled sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Water, doubled. The Han assignment of 梅花易數, book 1, also used by Jing Fang; not stated as such in the Zhouyi sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down it is itself; every line flipped: 30 離 Lí, Brightness sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 29, from 144.5° to 150.125° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- The Abyss: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 坎 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Khan, here repeated, shows the possession of sincerity, through which the mind is penetrating. Action (in accordance with this) will be of high value.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Water flowing on continuously; the superior man keeps his virtue constant and practises the business of instruction.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 坎 above when the year, month and day leave 6 on eight, 坎 below when the same total with the hour leaves 6.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 29 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Water upon water, a pit within a pit: difficulty met again and again, passed by keeping faith in the heart and going on like water, which fills each hollow and flows on.
Claims about it
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Gate 29 of Human Design, at 144.5° to 150.125° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 29.
falseWhat the record shows: The wheel is Shao Yong's circle rotated by Ra Uru Hu in 1987 to 1989 so that hexagram 41 starts at 2° Aquarius. No Chinese source we found puts the hexagrams on degrees of the zodiac.
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Being born under 坎 Kǎn fixes a person's character.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A modern reading with no source in the tradition. The Zhouyi has no birth hexagram; the cast reads a figure, not a person, and everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour shares it.
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When Jung drew hexagram 29 in 1949, synchronicity showed the oracle answering him.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: Jung tells the cast in his foreword and frames it in his idea of synchronicity, a hypothesis he offered in place of causality. No test of it exists.
