What is Bagua?
Bagua (Chinese: 八卦; pinyin: bāguà; literally “eight trigrams”) is a set of symbols from China intended to illustrate the nature of reality as comprising mutually opposing forces reinforcing one another. Each trigram is composed of three lines, each either “broken” or “unbroken”, which represent yin and yang, respectively. Each line having two possible states allows for a total of 2³ = 8 trigrams, whose early enumeration and characterization in China has had an effect on the history of Chinese philosophy and cosmology.
The bagua serves multiple functions across Chinese metaphysical traditions. The trigrams are related to the divination practice as described within the I Ching and practiced as part of the Shang and Zhou state religion, as well as with the concepts of taiji and the five elements within traditional Chinese metaphysics. The trigrams have correspondences in astronomy, divination, meditation, astrology, geography, geomancy (feng shui), anatomy, decorative arts, the family, and martial arts (particularly tai chi and baguazhang).
Origins & Lineage
The bagua can appear in two different arrangements: the Primordial (先天八卦), “Earlier Heaven”, or “Fuxi” bagua (伏羲八卦), which is named according to the legend of Fuxi being the first primordial being to identify the eight trigrams; and the Manifested (後天八卦), “Later Heaven”, or “King Wen” bagua, which arose during recorded Chinese history.
According to tradition, at the time of the first Huang monarch, King Fu Xi, there emerged from the great Huang He (Yellow River) a dragon-horse with the bagua or eight designs (trigrams) on its back. Seeing them, Fu Xi created the bagua emblems. Tradition has it that the principle of Bagua originated more than 4,000 years ago with the mythical Sage ruler Fuxi (伏羲). Of course, the historical accuracy of this claim is the subject of considerable debate among scholars.
In the I Ching, two trigrams are stacked together to create a six-line figure known as a hexagram. There are 64 possible permutations. The 64 hexagrams and their descriptions make up the book. Eventually, these concepts were developed into one of the most important classical texts of Chinese culture, the Book of Changes (易經; Yìjīng, or I-Ching). Sometime around the Zhou Dynasty (1122 – 256 B.C.E.).
The sequence of trigrams in the Later Heaven bagua is attributed to King Wen. According to another philosophical description, “When the world began, there was heaven and earth. Heaven mated with the earth and gave birth to everything in the world. Heaven is Qian-gua, and the Earth is Kun-gua. The remaining six gua are their sons and daughters.”
How It’s Practiced
The bagua is encountered across multiple disciplines, each applying the eight trigrams in distinct ways:
Divination: The Bagua is fundamental to the I Ching, where the trigrams are combined to form hexagrams used in divination, offering guidance and insights.
Feng Shui: The bagua is a tool in the majority of feng shui schools. The bagua used in feng shui can appear in two different versions: the Earlier Heaven bagua, used for burial sites, and the Later Heaven bagua, used for residences. A bagua map is a tool used in Western forms of feng shui to map a room or location and see how the different sections correspond to different aspects in one’s life.
Martial Arts: Baguazhang (八卦掌) is one of the three main Chinese martial arts of the Wudang school, literally meaning “eight trigram palm”, referring to the bagua “trigrams” of the Yijing. The creation of baguazhang as a formalized martial art is attributed to Dong Haichuan, who is said to have learned it from Taoist and Buddhist masters in the mountains of rural China during the early 19th century. The practice of circle walking, or “turning the circle”, is baguazhang’s characteristic method of stance and movement training. All forms of baguazhang utilize circle walking as an integral part of training.
Traditional Chinese Medicine: In traditional Chinese medicine, the Earlier Heaven sequence is known as the prenatal sequence and is used to understand familial risk for illness or disease. The Later Heaven bagua is known as the postnatal bagua arrangement in traditional Chinese medicine; it is used to understand physical, emotional and environmental patterns that influence health or disease.
Bagua Today
Contemporary practitioners encounter bagua through several channels. In the spiritual and wellness communities, bagua appears primarily through feng shui consultations, where practitioners use the bagua map to assess and optimize living and working spaces. The Later Heaven bagua arrangement has become particularly widespread in Western feng shui schools, sometimes simplified for popular application.
The martial art of baguazhang continues to be taught in traditional Chinese martial arts schools worldwide, typically as an advanced internal practice. Students generally begin with tai chi or xingyiquan before approaching baguazhang’s complex circular movements. The art remains practiced in several distinct lineages descended from Dong Haichuan’s original students, including the Yin, Cheng, and Liang styles.
Students of the I Ching engage with bagua as the foundational symbolic language of hexagram interpretation. Each reading involves understanding how two trigrams combine and interact to produce meaning. Online I Ching resources, books, and teachers continue to transmit this ancient divination method to contemporary seekers.
Common Misconceptions
Bagua is not a single practice but a symbolic framework applied across multiple disciplines. Confusion often arises when seekers conflate the feng shui bagua map with the martial art baguazhang, or assume that understanding one application automatically translates to others.
The popularity of feng shui increased in the West because of the bagua of the eight aspirations. Applying feng shui using the bagua of the eight aspirations made it possible to simplify feng shui and to use it for the general public. Western bagua focuses more heavily on intention than the traditional forms of feng shui. Experienced practitioners of traditional feng shui disregard Western bagua for its simplicity, since it does not take into account the forms of the landscape, time, or the annual cycles.
The bagua is also not a deity or object of worship, but rather a conceptual map representing the interplay of yin and yang forces in nature. The trigrams themselves are abstract symbols, not magical talismans, though they may be used ritually in certain contexts.
Furthermore, bagua should not be reduced to mere decoration or aesthetic symbolism. Each trigram carries specific correspondences to natural elements, family relationships, directions, and qualities that form an integrated cosmological system requiring study to properly understand and apply.
How to Begin
For those interested in bagua through divination, begin with Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching, which includes detailed commentary on each trigram and hexagram. Online resources such as I Ching apps can facilitate daily practice, though understanding the trigram structure deepens interpretive skill.
Those drawn to feng shui should distinguish between traditional compass-based methods and Western symbolic approaches. Books such as “The Western Guide to Feng Shui” by Terah Kathryn Collins introduce the bagua map system, while classical texts explore traditional Chinese methods that incorporate time cycles and environmental forms.
Prospective baguazhang students should seek qualified instructors in Chinese internal martial arts. Due to the complexity of the art, most teachers recommend establishing foundations in tai chi or qigong first. Authentic lineage schools emphasize circle walking practice and internal energy cultivation over external techniques.
For academic understanding, consult scholarly works on Chinese cosmology and the philosophical foundations of the I Ching. The trigram correspondences form a language worth learning systematically: each of the eight represents a natural phenomenon (heaven, earth, thunder, wind, water, fire, mountain, lake), a family member, a direction, and other associated qualities.