The 64 I Ching Hexagrams: Chart, List & Meanings

The I Ching has sixty-four hexagrams, six-line figures built from pairs of the eight trigrams. This page is your plain-English hexagram chart and index to I Ching hexagram meanings: all sixty-four in King Wen order with names, pinyin, trigram pairs and a one-line meaning for each, and every row links to the full classical text on this site. Read it as a chart of the whole system — scan the list to find a hexagram by number, name or figure, then follow its row to the judgment and six lines.

How to Read This List

Each hexagram is a six-line figure drawn from the bottom up, and the same figure can be written as two trigrams: the lower three lines and the upper three lines. The pairing matters more than the parts. The tradition reads the lower trigram as the inner side of a situation and the upper as the outer side, which is why Heaven over Earth and Earth over Heaven carry opposite meanings. The English names below follow the standard renderings used across English editions; the meanings are written for this site and stay close to the classical judgment rather than any single translator's commentary.

King Wen numbering is the order of the received text. If you arrive here from a cast, the number you see on your result is this same King Wen number, so the table below is the direct index to your reading.

Hexagram Meanings at a Glance

Every hexagram meaning starts from the figure itself. Take Hexagram 1, The Creative(乾, qián): Heaven over Heaven, six solid lines. The picture is pure, untiring creative force, a sky pressing upward without end, and the hexagram meaning follows the picture — great things are possible now, but only through what is correct and firm.

Now read the pairing in the other direction. Hexagram 64, Before Completion(未濟, wèi jì) is Fire over Water, the crossing not yet made. Same two trigrams, opposite stack, opposite meaning: where Hexagram 1 is strength at full power, Hexagram 64 is the last ford where the fox wets its tail — not yet complete, so care and order finish the work.

That is the whole trick of hexagram meanings. The lower trigram is the inner side of your situation and the upper is the outer field it plays out in, and the name is the picture the two make together. Every one of the sixty-four I Ching hexagram meanings below is read this way, and each row links to the full classical text.

All 64 Hexagrams in King Wen Order

Meanings summarize each hexagram's classical judgment. English names follow the renderings used across standard English editions. Chinese names are in traditional characters, as in the received text.

From a List to Your Own Cast

A list tells you what each figure means in general. A cast tells you which figure speaks to your one question, asked once. The classical method is three coins, thrown six times, one line at a time, with moving lines marked and a second hexagram formed where they appear. If you want the ritual walked through step by step, our guide on when and how to cast covers timing, question framing and what to do with the result. If you already have a cast and are not sure where to start, the four-step interpretation guide takes you from the hexagram's name to its moving lines.

The same site also runs a free BaZi calculator if you came for a Chinese birth chart instead of a cast, and the eight trigrams guide explains the eight building blocks every hexagram in this list is made of.

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