Xun · Wind

Meaning

Xun ☴ is wind, and wood: a broken, yin line at the bottom under two whole ones, softness at the root of strength, as the wind slips under a door and the roots of a tree find their way through the soil. The Discussion of the Trigrams gives it one word, entering, and sets it in the south-east at the start of summer, where, it says, all things are made even and fresh. In the family of the trigrams it is the eldest daughter, the first of the three whose single yin line climbs from the bottom.

The tradition reads in it gentleness that gets everywhere, influence by persistence rather than force, and growth over time: the gift of the one who does not push but never stops, who convinces by coming back. Its difficulty is the wind’s own, changing direction, hesitating, going forward and back; the Discussion counts indecision among its images. A steady wind shapes the dunes and bends the trees, a gusting one only scatters leaves.

Its opposite is Zhen ☳, thunder, the eldest son. Thunder and wind are the two forms of wood among the trigrams, the sudden and the gradual, and the Book of Changes pairs them in Heng, constancy, the 32nd hexagram.

In practice

• The Kua number: Xun is Kua 4, of the East group. Its four supportive directions are the north (Growth), the south (Restoration), the east (Harmony) and the south-east, its own place (Stability).
• A Xun house: a home sitting in the south-east and facing north-west is a Xun house of the East group.
• The Flying Stars: the south-east is the Xun palace, home of the 4 Green, Wen Qu, the star of letters, study and the arts, and of romance.
• The 24 mountains: Xun’s 45° hold Chen, Xun and Si, from 112.5° to 157.5°; Xun itself, the middle one, is a mountain named after the trigram.
• Study and writing: the scholar’s pairing, the 1 and the 4 in one palace, joins water to the wood of Xun’s star; in season the classics read study and writing prospering there.

Across traditions

• In the Book of Changes Xun doubled is the 57th hexagram, wind upon wind, which Richard Wilhelm named the Gentle, the Penetrating: success through small steps, it says, and somewhere to go. Human Design’s Gate 57 is that hexagram.
• In Western astrology wind is air, one of the four elements, the element of the air signs, of thought and exchange; the Chinese wind is a figure of wood and a place on the compass, akin in its movement, different in its root.
• In Japan the trigram, son, gave its name to the south-east, tatsumi, the corner of the Dragon and the Snake, between Chen and Si as on the luopan.

Origin and history

The Discussion of the Trigrams, one of the Ten Wings of the Book of Changes, written between the Warring States and the Han, gives Xun the thigh among the parts of the body and the rooster among the animals, and a set of images half of the wind and half of wood: the carpenter’s straight line, the long, the high, going forward and back, scents carried far. In the Early Heaven arrangement, which Shao Yong and the Song scholars traced to Fu Xi, Xun stands in the south-west, facing Zhen; in the Later Heaven arrangement, which Feng Shui follows, it holds the south-east.

Richard Wilhelm’s translation of 1924 named it “the Gentle”. The compass schools set it in the south-east 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 fourth Kua; the Flying Stars, after Shen Zhureng, read its palace as the home of the 4.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune draws Xun from its lines, broken, whole and whole from the bottom up, rather than from a font. The trigram holds the south-east in the Later Heaven order and carries the Lo Shu’s number 4, which makes it Kua 4: the yang count gives it for a solar year such as 1987, 1996 or 2005, the yin count for 1980, 1989, 1998 or 2007, each year turning at Lichun.

Its directions follow from the lines. The north’s Kan differs from Xun in its top line alone, Growth; the south’s Li in its two lower lines, Restoration; the east’s Zhen in all three, Harmony. The four trigrams of the West group give Xun’s four challenging directions.

Correspondences