One broken line beneath two solid — the wind that enters everywhere by giving way, the root that finds every crack.
Xun is the trigram of Wind and Wood, ☴: a single broken yin line at the bottom beneath two solid yang lines. That one yielding line at the base is where the wind slips in and where the root takes hold — the softness underneath that lets a great strength penetrate without force. Xun is the Gentle, and its gentleness is not weakness but a method: the wind reaches into every corner precisely because it does not push, and the growing tree splits rock not by striking it but by insisting, patiently, along the line of least resistance.
As the first of Qian's daughters — the trigram that first received a yin line into the strong ground — Xun is the Eldest Daughter, the counterpart to Zhen the eldest son. Its images bridge two of the Western Elements: Wood in its penetrating growth and Air in its pervading wind. The Later Heaven arrangement places it in the Southeast, the direction of early summer, where the wind of spring matures into steady growth.
In divination Xun favors the gradual and the indirect — influence that works by consistency rather than confrontation, the gentle repeated pressure that shapes what no single blow could move. Its counsel is to penetrate softly and persist; its shadow is a pliancy that bends so readily it never holds any shape of its own.
The Figure
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Glyph | ☴ |
| Image | Wind / Wood |
| Attribute | Gentle, penetrating |
| Family | Eldest daughter |
| Direction (Later Heaven) | Southeast |
| Nearest Element | Wood / Air |