Each hexagram continues the last.
← I Ching
LAYER 02 · COURSE 5 · FREE
Map of the 64
Turn 64 names into one web: paired order, reversal and inversion, nuclears, images and the five phases. The last lesson leads to the door of Mei Hua.
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About 8 min
The order: pairs
The Sequence story, and “reversed or inverted”.
ONE THING TO REMEMBER
The 64 come in 32 pairs: 28 reversed, 4 inverted. Learn one hexagram and you learn its partner.
The 64 come in a fixed order
The received order runs from Qian and Kun to After and Before Completion. The Sequence commentary tells it as a story: heaven and earth give birth to things; birth is difficult (Zhun), the young are unformed (Meng), they need nourishment (Xu), and where there is food there is dispute (Song). Each hexagram picks up the problem left by the one before.
Always in pairs: reversed or inverted
Taken two at a time, the sequence forms 32 pairs. Kong Yingda summed it up: “paired two by two, either reversed or inverted.” In 28 pairs the second is the first turned upside down; in 4 pairs (Qian/Kun, Yi/Da Guo, Kan/Li, Zhong Fu/Xiao Guo) the figure looks the same upside down, so the partner is every line flipped. Tap any pair:
Reversed: turn Waiting upside down and you get Conflict: the same matter seen from the other side.
Why it matters
Learn one hexagram and you learn its partner too. Looking at the partner often shows the other face of the same matter: Waiting turned over is Conflict, what happens when waiting runs out.
Paired two by two, reversed or inverted.
The four inverted pairs.
Try it now
3 small points in this lesson; get each right once and you pass. A miss is fine: it comes back two questions later, asked a new way.