The Receptive (Earth)
The Yielding Ground
Carries what heaven begins: the strength of sustaining, and a yielding so complete it takes no shape.
Kun is three broken lines, the only trigram with no yang in it, and the tradition reads that complete yielding as the earth, which carries and nourishes what heaven begins. Its attribute in the Shuogua is devotion, its animal the ox and its part of the body the belly. In the family of trigrams it is the mother, and each of the three daughters takes her single yin line from Kun. In the Later Heaven arrangement it stands in the south-west. Doubled, it forms hexagram 2 of the King Wen sequence, which follows the Creative and carries the same name.
Light
Signifies receptivity, capacity, patient support, fertility, and the strength belonging to that which sustains and completes rather than initiates.
Shadow
Can mean passivity, inertia, dependence carried too far, and a yielding so complete that it offers no shape or resistance to whatever acts upon it.
