Na Jia: assigning branches to the six lines

One trigram has two positions in a hexagram

A hexagram combines a lower trigram and an upper trigram. Read each set from bottom to top. A trigram’s first three branch assignments belong to its lower position; its last three belong to its upper position.

For Qian, the lower sequence is Zi, Yin, Chen and the upper sequence is Wu, Shen, Xu. For Kun, the lower sequence is Wei, Si, Mao and the upper sequence is Chou, Hai, You. The complete eight-trigram table below is read directly from the shared engine.

What the traditional assignment verse preserves

Bu Shi Zheng Zong’s Na Jia verse records both stems and branches. The classical stem associations include Jia/Ren for Qian and Yi/Gui for Kun, with a fixed stem for each other trigram.

Our displayed line analysis uses branches: a branch identifies its element, that element is compared with the palace element to obtain a relationship category, and the branch is compared with month and day branches. The omitted stems are not secretly contributing to a different English calculation.

Yang advances and yin reverses

The traditional sequence advances through every other branch for yang trigrams and reverses through every other branch for yin trigrams. Continuing the sequence from the third to the fourth line naturally places the upper assignment six branch positions away from the lower assignment.

In a doubled trigram, this makes lines 1/4, 2/5 and 3/6 clash in pairs. That structural fact is the reason the eight pure hexagrams belong to the six-clash group. Two additional hexagrams also satisfy the full pairwise clash test.

A six-combination hexagram instead has all three corresponding pairs in combination. Use the computed library flags rather than assuming every apparently harmonious picture is a six-combination structure.

The indexing error we corrected

An earlier implementation used the lower trigram’s first three assignments for an upper trigram as well. That meant the upper three lines across the sixty-four static hexagrams used the wrong part of the table: 64 × 3 = 192 line assignments.

The error could propagate into line elements and relationship categories. It was not a choice between schools; it contradicted the declared table. The corrected implementation reads positions four through six for the upper trigram and is checked against the structural rules.

What happens to old saved readings

A saved chart snapshot and its existing reading belong together. Replacing the chart under an old interpretation would make that pair internally inconsistent. The site preserves the original snapshot and text and distinguishes old engine versions instead of rewriting a user’s saved material during an interface change.

That separation also matters in evaluation: results from before and after an engine correction should not be silently pooled into one accuracy claim.

What comes after branch assignment

Once each line has a branch, its element can be compared with the palace element. The result is Parent, Sibling, Child, Wealth or Officer. Self and Other are located through the Eight Palaces structure rather than by choosing whichever branch looks favorable.

Then a specific cast adds the casting date’s context and any moving lines. The hexagram library deliberately shows the stable structure, while the casting tool includes the cast-specific layers.

Read Self and Other and focus selection next. Correct assignment makes a chart reproducible; it does not by itself validate a prediction.