When is a hexagram female, and when is it male?

[Phoenix3]

If you study the king wen order of the yijing, it becomes clear that it is ordered in the form of pairs, that is a male and female version of a hexagram. Hexagram 4 is the reverse (opposite gender) of hexagram 3, hexagram 6 is the reverse of hexagram 5, and so on.

 

But I want to know, which one is the female, and which is the male?

Edited July 12, 2018 by Phoenix3

[Lost in Translation]

That's a good question! Individual trigrams are either male or female but to my knowledge the hexagrams are neither. I suppose one could find the ruling trigram or trigrams within the hex and use that, but that seems like a stretch. Some folks here are much more knowledgeable than I on this matter (hint, he's from the Netherlands and makes videos on YouTube). Perhaps they can answer this.

[Phoenix3]

I think you’re referring to @Harmen. He seems very knowledgeable. Thanks  

[Harmen]

6 hours ago, Phoenix3 said:

If you study the king wen order of the yijing, it becomes clear that it is ordered in the form of pairs, that is a male and female version of a hexagram. Hexagram 4 is the reverse (opposite gender) of hexagram 3, hexagram 6 is the reverse of hexagram 5, and so on.

 

But I want to know, which one is the female, and which is the male?

 

Just to be clear: you are explicitly talking about 'male' and 'female' which is not the same as 'yin' and 'yang'. It is your aim to attach genders to hexagrams?

[OldDog]

I think this is a good topic for discussion. Not because it is important to assign gender but because underlying is the question of what is the nature of that which we label as male/female, active/passive, light/dark, etc. All of these labels seem to be just expedients that allow us to carry on conversation. They all carry a certain degree of bias, which if accepted and left unchallenged misleads us in understanding. For example, if I am a man, how I perceive and accept the notion of maleness/femaleness is different that how I would see it if I am a female. (It's even hard to formulate such a sentence.) 

 

I am beginning to understand that behind these paired descriptors is much more than their mutual antithesis. I started down this road by taking a more careful and detailed reading of the first two hexagrams and then following the discussion in the Dazhuan. My understanding is not yet well formed, so I am following this thread with some interest.

[Phoenix3]

7 hours ago, Harmen said:

 

Just to be clear: you are explicitly talking about 'male' and 'female' which is not the same as 'yin' and 'yang'. It is your aim to attach genders to hexagrams?

 

It seems to me that hexagrams can be sorted into two groups, because of the way the yijing is ordered (at least in the king wen order). It seems to be in the pattern: Hexagram 1 (Qian), Hexagram 2 (Kun), Hexagram 3 (male), Hexagram 4 (female), Hexagram 5 (male), Hexagram 6 (female), etc

 

or is it: Hexagram 1 (Qian), Hexagram 2 (Kun), Hexagram 3 (female), Hexagram 4 (male), Hexagram 5 (female), Hexagram 6 (male), etc

 

I’m not going to refer to them as yin or yang, because it seems that a hexagram which has 5 yang lines and 1 yin line, although being mainly yang, might actually be female, and a hexagram with 5 yin lines and 1 yang line might actually be male. Maybe. I don't know really,

Edited July 12, 2018 by Phoenix3

[Harmen]

I looked in the 易學大辭典 (which is to me what the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook is to Huey, Dewey, and Louie) and it does not mention gender and hexagrams. My personal choice would be to consider the odd-numbered hexagrams male and the even-numbered hexagrams female.

 

In the Bagong 八宮 system by Jing Fang 京方 each House has a Phase (from the Five Phases) connected to it, based on the Palace hexagram, the first hexagram in each Palace which is a 純卦 hexagram made of twice the same trigram and this trigram has a Phase connected to it which it transfers to all other hexagrams within that Palace (I think this is the worst description I have ever given about it. See my paper, p. 13). By analogy you could also say the the gender of that trigram is transferred to all the other hexagram within each Palace.

 

But this is just an idea that is as good or bad as any other idea. The Chinese probably did not think about hexagrams as male or female because this concept is already found in the individual lines.

Edited July 12, 2018 by Harmen

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Odds are yang and evens are yin, that much i know.

 

What is the purpose of gendering the hexagrams?

If you’re looking to divide them into pairs then Qian and Kun give you a heaven/male/yang and earth/female/yin ordering in the first two so that would make the odd numbered ones as heaven and evens are earth.