The 64 I Ching hexagrams (六十四卦 liù shí sì guà) are the working vocabulary of the Book of Changes. Each one is a stack of six lines that pictures a situation and the direction it tends to move. When you cast a question, what you build is a hexagram; when you read the answer, you read that hexagram and any lines within it that are changing. Learning to see the i ching hexagrams as structured figures — not mysterious symbols — is the single step that turns the classic from a curiosity into something you can actually use.
What a hexagram is
A hexagram (卦 guà) is six horizontal lines drawn one above the other. Every line is one of two kinds: a solid line is yang (陽 yáng), a broken line with a gap in the middle is yin (陰 yīn). That is the whole alphabet — two marks, six places.
The lines are read from the bottom up. The line at the base is the first line, the one above it the second, and so on to the sixth line at the top. This matters when you interpret: the bottom of a hexagram is the beginning or root of a situation, the top is its culmination or its passing. A beginner’s instinct is to read top-down like a page of text; the I Ching runs the other way, like something growing from the ground.
Each hexagram divides cleanly in half. The lower three lines form one trigram (八卦 bā guà, a three-line figure), and the upper three lines form another. So every hexagram is two trigrams stacked — a lower trigram carrying an upper trigram. Understanding the eight trigrams first makes all sixty-four legible, which is why we treat them separately in the eight trigrams (Bagua) of the I Ching.
易经 · Book of Changes
Cast your own hexagram. Six throws build your hexagram and any changing lines, each linked to a plain reading. Free, in your browser.
There are exactly eight trigrams, each a distinct arrangement of three yin-or-yang lines. Stack any trigram over any trigram and you have a hexagram. Eight choices for the upper figure multiplied by eight for the lower gives 8 × 8 = 64. That is where the number comes from — nothing is left out, nothing is doubled.
Here are the eight building blocks, copied from our reference table:
Symbol
Name
Hanzi
Pinyin
Image
Element
Attribute
☰
Qian
乾
qián
Heaven
Metal
creative, strong
☱
Dui
兌
duì
Lake
Metal
joyous, open
☲
Li
離
lí
Fire
Fire
clinging, radiant
☳
Zhen
震
zhèn
Thunder
Wood
arousing, movement
☴
Xun
巽
xùn
Wind
Wood
gentle, penetrating
☵
Kan
坎
kǎn
Water
Water
abysmal, danger
☶
Gen
艮
gèn
Mountain
Earth
still, keeping
☷
Kun
坤
kūn
Earth
Earth
receptive, yielding
Order is not decorative. Qian over Qian is Hexagram 1, 乾 qián, The Creative — heaven doubled. Kun over Kun is Hexagram 2, 坤 kūn, The Receptive — earth doubled. Swap the two mixed trigrams and you get a different hexagram with a different meaning: Kun/Earth over Qian/Heaven is Hexagram 11, 泰 tài, Peace, while Qian/Heaven over Kun/Earth is Hexagram 12, 否 pǐ, Standstill. Same two trigrams, reversed, opposite counsel. This is why a single misremembered trigram gives you the wrong hexagram entirely.
The King Wen sequence
The traditional order of the sixty-four is called the King Wen sequence (文王卦序 wén wáng guà xù), attributed to King Wen of Zhou. It is the order in which the hexagrams appear in the received text, from Hexagram 1 乾 qián through to Hexagram 64 未濟 wèi jì, Before Completion. It is not sorted alphabetically or by any simple binary count; it is arranged in meaningful pairs.
Most hexagrams sit next to their inverse — flip the whole figure upside down and you get its neighbour. Where a hexagram looks the same upside down, it is instead paired with its opposite, every line switched from yin to yang. The sequence also tells a loose story, opening with the pure creative and receptive forces and closing on a telling note: Hexagram 63, 既濟 jì jì, After Completion, followed by Hexagram 64, 未濟 wèi jì, Before Completion. The book ends not on arrival but on the threshold of the next beginning — change never quite finishes. When you see a hexagram referred to by a number, that number is its King Wen position, and it never changes.
How to find any hexagram from its two trigrams
Once you have cast six lines, you have a specific figure in hand and need its name and number. The method is mechanical:
Read your six lines bottom to top and split them: lines one, two and three are the lower trigram; lines four, five and six are the upper trigram.
Identify each three-line group against the table above — which of the eight it is.
Look up that ordered pair (upper over lower) to get the hexagram’s number, name and meaning.
For example, if the lower trigram is Zhen/Thunder and the upper is Kan/Water, the reference gives Hexagram 3, 屯 zhūn, Difficulty at the Beginning. If the lower is Kan/Water and the upper is Qian/Heaven, that is Hexagram 6, 訟 sòng, Conflict. Every one of the 64 resolves this cleanly because each ordered pair is unique. We keep a verified table so you never have to trust memory for a number or a trigram pair — a wrong pair is a wrong reading. The individual pages carry this through: each has its own address, from Hexagram 1 乾 Qian onward, with its trigrams, its Judgment and Image in plain language, and a note on its changing lines.
Speaking of which, a cast rarely gives you just one figure. Lines that come up as “old” yin or yang are changing lines, and they transform to produce a second hexagram — the situation you are moving toward. That mechanism, and how to read the two figures together, is covered in I Ching changing lines and the second hexagram.
Where to go from here
The sixty-four are best learned in context rather than memorised as a list. Start with what the whole system is for in What Is the I Ching?, then work through how to read the I Ching before you cast in earnest. The full set of hexagram pages, and the overview that ties them together, live on the I Ching hub.
The same trigrams and five elements that structure these hexagrams also structure a Ba Zi (八字 bāzì) chart — the two arts share a root. If you want to see that logic applied to your own birth data rather than a cast question, plot your chart free with the Ba Zi calculator and read the elements at work in your own four pillars.
