What can be said of the Eight Trigrams of Taoist cosmology, also known as the Bagua, that hasn’t already been said on ten thousand other web sites? Here I show the trigrams and their duals together in an arrangement that places one or two of them at a site of the four elements.

When considering the binary values of the trigrams, this arrangement is reminiscent of my Marriage of Opposites, Part 2. In doing this each link between them represents a common value for a trigram line. For example between Heaven / Earth and Water / Fire the 2nd line is yang for both Heaven and Water, and the 2nd line is yin for both Earth and Fire. Opposite this link is its reverse: the 2nd line is yin for both Thunder and Mountain, and yang for both Wind and Lake. All six links have this quality.

Two smaller diagrams show the common English names as well as the corresponding attributes of the trigrams. Interestingly, if Heaven and Wind are considered Air, Lake is considered Water, Mountain is considered Earth, and Thunder is considered Fire, then you have each element mentioned twice, once above and once below, and a crossed loop of pairs: Air / Earth, Fire / Air, Water / Fire, Earth / Water, and then back to Air / Earth. Nice!

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagua

https://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/I_Ching/trigrams.htm

https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/Chinese_Customs/bagua.htm

https://www.risingmoontaichi.net/the-eight-trigrams

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