Qian · Heaven

Meaning

Qian ☰ is heaven: three whole lines, yang through and through, firm in every place. The Discussion of the Trigrams gives it one word, jiàn, strength that does not tire, the strength of the sky that turns day after day without stopping. It is the father of the family of trigrams, and its place in the Later Heaven order is the north-west, at the start of winter, where, the Discussion says, yin and yang meet and contend as the year closes.

The tradition reads in Qian the creative: leadership and clarity of purpose, the strength that sets the course and holds it, the ability to begin something from nothing and to stand for it. Its difficulty is the shadow of the same firmness, authority that hardens, a will that leaves no room for others, pride in a strength that forgets it needs the ground. The Book of Changes ends its first hexagram with the dragon that flies too high and comes to regret it: strength knows its measure.

Its opposite is Kun ☷, the earth, three broken lines. The two are the father and the mother of the six other trigrams, and every one of those is Qian with some of its lines given to Kun, or Kun with some of its lines given to Qian.

In practice

• The Kua number: Qian is Kua 6, of the West group. Its four supportive directions are the west (Growth), the north-east (Restoration), the south-west (Harmony) and the north-west, its own place (Stability).
• A Qian house: a home sitting in the north-west and facing south-east is a Qian house of the West group.
• The Flying Stars: the north-west is the Qian palace, home of the 6 White, Wu Qu, the star of authority, leadership and the support of those above.
• The 24 mountains: Qian’s 45° hold Xu, Qian and Hai, from 292.5° to 337.5°; Qian itself, the middle one, is a mountain named after the trigram.
• The flight of the stars: from the centre, every star flies first to the north-west, so the Qian palace holds the number after the centre’s when a star flies forward, the one before it when it flies backward.

Across traditions

• In the Book of Changes Qian doubled is the 1st hexagram, also called Qian, which Richard Wilhelm named the Creative: heaven upon heaven, and the six stages of a dragon from hidden in the deep to flying in the sky. Human Design’s Gate 1 is that hexagram.
• In Korea Qian is one of the four trigrams on the national flag, standing for heaven.
• In Japan its reading, inui, names the north-west, the corner of the Dog and the Pig, between Xu and Hai as on the luopan.
• In Western astrology the sky itself is the stage of every planet; the trigram’s heaven is no planet but a quality, strength without rest, and the Chinese phase of Metal, which Qian carries, is a different idea again.

Origin and history

The Book of Changes opens with Qian, and its Words on the Text, one of the Ten Wings, give it four qualities that the tradition repeated for two thousand years: origin, success, benefit and steadfastness. The Discussion of the Trigrams gives it the head among the parts of the body, the horse among the animals, and images of the round, the ruler, jade, metal, cold and ice, and many kinds of horse, the good, the old and the lean. In the Early Heaven arrangement, which Shao Yong and the Song scholars traced to Fu Xi, Qian holds the south at the top of the circle, facing Kun; in the Later Heaven arrangement, which Feng Shui follows, it moves to the north-west.

Richard Wilhelm’s translation of 1924 named it “the Creative”. The compass schools set it in the north-west of the luopan, one of the four corner trigrams among the 24 mountains, and the Ba Zhai Ming Jing makes it the trigram of the sixth Kua; the Flying Stars, after Shen Zhureng, read its palace as the home of the 6.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune draws Qian from its three whole lines rather than from a font. The trigram holds the north-west in the Later Heaven order and carries the Lo Shu’s number 6, which makes it Kua 6: the yang count gives it for a solar year such as 1985, 1994 or 2003, the yin count for 1982, 1991, 2000 or 2009, each year turning at Lichun.

Its directions follow from the lines. The west’s Dui differs from Qian in its top line alone, Growth; the north-east’s Gen in its two lower lines, Restoration; the south-west’s Kun in all three, Harmony. The four trigrams of the East group give Qian’s four challenging directions.

Correspondences