The Round and Square Hexagram Charts

This method adds the 64 hexagrams to the compass in two charts, the round chart and the square chart. The round chart reckons time; the square chart fixes places in space. Each line of a hexagram governs a span of years: six years for a yin line, nine for a yang line.

The charts on the compass

The round chart (天圆图) and the square chart (地方图) are the round and square hexagram charts of Original Meaning of the Zhouyi. With these two charts the compass can be simplified: the heaven, earth and human plates (the compass's three rings of the 24 mountains) and the round and square charts are all it takes to lay out good feng shui accurately.

By turning the round chart one way for the future and the other way for the past, one can tell when a lair takes effect and whom it protects, and, as with a birth chart, list the lair's annual phases and what each son's line of the family will meet.

The two charts in full

The square chart: eight rows and eight columns, each cell giving a hexagram's English name; the full names, with their characters, are in the round chart's table below. Every hexagram in a column has the same upper trigram, which the header names ("Earth above" and so on). Every hexagram in a row has the same lower trigram: from top to bottom, Earth, Mountain, Water, Wind, Thunder, Fire, Lake, Heaven.

The round chart: from Heaven at the top, once around clockwise. The Years column counts six years for each yin line and nine for each yang line; see below.

The round chart: reckoning time

Heaven at the top of the round chart sits where it does on the compass's ring of the 64 hexagrams. First set the chart's Rat and Horse points in place (taking Rat and Horse from the 24 mountains of the earth plate); Heaven then lies above Horse, and Earth below Rat.

Heaven stands for the heavens and for yang. Turning left from Heaven at the top shows yang waning little by little while yin grows. This is the direction of the ecliptic, the sun's path as seen from the earth, rising in the east. The earth goes around the sun once a year, in about 365 days; the extra time adds up to one day every four years, which is why every fourth year is a leap year. The stretch from Heaven, turning left, down to Earth is taken as the reckoning of years.

Earth stands for yin and for the moon. Turning right from Earth at the bottom, that is counterclockwise, carries the sense of yang born when yin reaches its limit: after Earth come Splitting Apart (山地剥), then Holding Together (水地比), and so on. When winter ends, yang is born again from below; this is where the solar terms come from.

So in the Book of Changes the round chart is in truth a tool for reckoning time, and it can be turned on into the past and into the future. On the compass, clockwise is the future and counterclockwise the past.

The square chart: fixing space

The square chart stands for places in space. The round chart has Heaven above and Earth below, the layout of the Earlier Heaven arrangement; the square chart is the reverse, with Earth at the top and Heaven at the bottom, because the energy of earth rises and the energy of heaven descends, and only so do all things come into being.

All things pass through birth, death and return, like the twelve life stages: birth, bath, youth, arrival, peak, decline, ebbing, dormant, stored, spent, conception and nurture, round and round without end. Birth, age, illness and death are all laid out in it, down to how life carries on after death. So precise a scheme is a thing to marvel at.

On a combined compass that carries the rings of both main compass schools, the eight trigrams of the inner ring, in the Earlier Heaven arrangement, enclose a ring of the 64 hexagrams' short names in Earlier Heaven order; that ring is laid out as this square chart.

From Earth, turning left to Rat: start at Earth in the top left corner of the square chart and read down: Modesty (地山谦), The Army (地水师), Pushing Upward (地风升), Return (地雷复), Darkening of the Light (地火明夷), Approach (地泽临), Peace (地天泰). Then go up to the top of the second column, Splitting Apart, Mountain (艮为山), Youthful Folly (山水蒙) and so on, column by column, ending at the foot of the fourth column with Inner Truth (风泽中孚) and Small Taming (风天小畜). On the compass, Earth begins above Horse; turning left to the Rat position lands exactly on Small Taming. This is the yin energy of earth starting small and rising step by step until it reaches heaven.

From Heaven, turning right back to Horse: then start from Heaven below the Rat mountain and turn right, back to Earth at the top. On the square chart this runs straight up from the bottom right corner: Treading (天泽履), Fellowship (天火同人), The Unexpected (天雷无妄), Coming to Meet (天风姤), Conflict (天水讼), Retreat (天山遁), Standstill (天地否). Then it moves to the foot of the second column from the right: Breakthrough (泽天夬), Lake (兑为泽) and so on. This is the yang energy of heaven descending.

So the cycle runs: the yin energy of earth rises when it receives yang, the yang energy of heaven descends when it meets yin, and nothing in the world departs from this way.

Six lines, six stages

This way takes in every living thing on earth, and even things without life: all pass through the cycle. This is what the Book of Changes means by life giving rise to life. Change is the sun and the moon; heaven and earth are greatest of all and contain everything. It is the law of all things, unchanged since the beginning of time, and it can be reduced to 64 hexagrams of six lines each. Every change in the matter of the earth runs through no more than six stages; past that number, a thing is surely of no further use.

Each yin line governs six years and each yang line nine. Peace, for example, has the figure ䷊: its three yin lines run 18 years and its three yang lines 27, together 45 years. The other hexagrams work the same way; each hexagram's years are in the Years column of the round chart's table above. For how these years are used to read the family's lines and the annual phases, see Casting a Site's Hexagram: Family Lines and Years.

Source: The Way of the Earth's Veins (天纪：地脉道)