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Hexagram 0 — Kun, The Receptive
Chronological no. 0 (binary-weight order) · King Wen no. (traditional) 2 · 坤
By Anibal Edelberto Amiot — Updated October 1, 2026
the mother
the mother
Earth carries and nourishes without distinction: it does not choose what it supports, it supports everything. The broken line twice over, the same openness twice, one welcoming the other without ever closing. This is the image of pure capacity — not the one that acts first, but the one that makes possible the action of all that comes to it. The sage who contemplates this figure understands that generosity needs no brilliance: thus the noble one welcomes all beings with generous virtue, as vast as the soil that refuses no seed.
The soil receives, and form settles into place. Nothing has yet happened, and yet everything is already made possible: the earth of the first line demands nothing, it waits. This is not the passivity of one who gives up, but the patience of one who knows that rightly understood docility carries within it all the fruitfulness to come. The whole figure will unfold from this one quality alone: to welcome before wishing to impose, to settle before presuming to build.
The six lines
At the base of the earth, emptiness closes over: what was still an opening begins to fill.
The receptive earth reaches its fullness: the silent welcome that carried the lower figure is about to assert itself.
At the threshold between earth and man, suppleness gathers weight: what once yielded by nature is about to harden.
In the listening of man, the hollow fills: the openness that received is about to assert itself.
At the sage's seat, emptiness fills: the suppleness that governed with discretion gathers a new force.
At the summit, emptiness reaches its fullest extent and closes: the furthest opening turns toward its opposite.
Source: La Livrée d'Hermès, Anibal Amiot — chapter 7.1 (pp. 63–68). French version of this page.
For the notions used here — magic square, layer and casting, the Yi Jing — see the project lexicon.
The patterns of this hexagram
Eight 12×12 Jacquard patterns are generated from this hexagram, one for each admissible family of the system. Each has its own page: cell, tiling, recolourings and data.
Bases — YANG mutant
Bases — YANG
Pair of two — YANG + YIN mutant
Pair of two — YIN mutant + YANG mutant
Pair of two — YIN + YANG
Pair of two — YIN + YANG mutant
Triple — without YANG
Triple — without YANG mutant
Neighbouring hexagrams
63 — Qian, The Creative · 1 — Fu, Return
Hexagrams sharing a trigram
Same upper trigram (☷ Kun): 1 — Fu, Return · 2 — Shi, The Army · 3 — Lin, Approach · 4 — Qian, Modesty · 5 — Ming Yi, Darkening of the Light · 6 — Sheng, Pushing Upward · 7 — Tai, Peace
Same lower trigram (☷ Kun): 8 — Yu, Enthusiasm · 16 — Bi, Holding Together · 24 — Cui, Gathering Together · 32 — Bo, Splitting Apart · 40 — Jin, Progress · 48 — Guan, Contemplation · 56 — Pi, Standstill
