Trigram ☵

坎 Kǎn

Water · Abysmal depth and flow

A yang line held between two yin lines: water running through a ravine, hard at the centre and yielding at the edges. Its quality is the pit or danger (陷), and its organ is the ear, which listens in the dark. Water keeps flowing through danger without losing itself; that is the lesson.

Image
水Water
Quality
陷Abysmal depth and flow
Family
Middle son
Five Phase
水Water
Body
耳the ears
Animal
豕the pig
Early Heaven
west
Later Heaven
north · midwinter, at the solstice

Body, animal and quality: the Shuo Gua (说卦传), the Ten Wings commentary on the trigrams.

Its solar term

In the Later Heaven circle the eight trigrams mark the eight turning points of the year. 坎 ☵ opens Winter Solstice.

冬至Dōngzhì · Winter Solstice

The 15 hexagrams that contain it

坎 above (outer)

坎 below (inner)