The Path of Traditional Martial Arts: BAGUAZHANG, THE 8 DIAGRAMS, AND THE YIJING

by Phillip Starr

Many of you will be familiar with the “8 diagrams” (aka. “trigrams”), which form a part of Chinese cosmology and philosophy. Each diagram is composed of three lines, some of which may be broken and others solid. This provides eight possible combinations. A broken line is representative of Yin while a solid line represents Yang. The diagrams portray eight stages of change and are intended to depict a pattern, which shows how one event or condition gives rise to another.

When one trigram is placed atop another, it becomes a “hexagram.” This creates 64 possibilities. The Chinese classical “Book of Changes” (the Yijing, aka., “I-Ching”) was originally intended to illustrate, through the arrangement of the hexagrams, certain patterns in nature that transpire between, or are the result of, naturally occurring phenomena that exist throughout the physical universe.

Obviously, the study of the hexagrams and the Book of Changes is extraordinarily complex; so much so that the ancient sage, Kung-Fuze (Confucius), did not take up its study until he was past the age of 60! He felt that until that point in his life he simply lacked the maturity and wisdom to fully understand it. In the West and even among many of the common people of China, the Book of Changes is often used in the practice of divination, which is not at all in keeping with its original intended purpose.

The martial discipline of baguazhang emphasizes the importance of change, the ability to readily adapt to the fluidity of combat as well as life. Some of the revered teachers of the past alluded to the practice of 64 postures, which allegedly correspond to the 64 hexagrams of the Yijing. However, after having studied this boxing art for several decades I must say that I have found that this art originally had no connection whatsoever to these philosophical concepts.

Dong-haiquan, the first known practitioner of the art, made no mention of the boxing art he taught and the lofty philosophical and cosmological aspects of the Yinjing. In fact, the first generation of baguazhang enthusiasts was composed largely of uneducated people who were barely (if at all) literate and who knew very little about sublime Taoist cosmological principles or philosophy. The original name of the art, “zhuanzhang” (which means “turning palms”), is not at all indicative of any association between the art and the enigmatic trigrams of the Yijing.

The use of the name “baguazhang” in referring to this martial art first appears in a book entitled, Bagua Zhuanzhang Hui-lan”, which was authored by Zheng-Xingsan, a well-known scholar and a student of Dong's most senior disciple, Yin-fu. After the collapse of the Quing government in 1911, Zheng found himself suddenly unemployed. To keep himself occupied he wrote down everything he'd learned and tried to formulate a relationship between the art and the Yijing. This guy really needed a life. Or a girlfriend.

Dong's second most senior student, Cheng-Tinghua, was influences by Ji-Fengxiang, who was an astrologer as well as a good friend and student. The result was that Cheng began to expound upon the theories of the 8 trigrams, the Yijing, and the accompanying 64 hexagrams...and their supposed relationship to the boxing art. This affected virtually all aspects of training.

Cheng's merging of ancient Taoist concepts with his martial art would inspire another of his students, Sun-Lutang, to further expound upon these ideas. Sun trained assiduously in Taoist forms of qigong and also made a detailed study of the Yijing. Between 1915 and 1927, he authored several texts that tried to show a definitive relationship between a number of Taoist philosophies and the internal martial arts (the neijia).

But believe me, if you;re trying to find a correlation between certain baguazhang postures and the trigrams or hexagrams, you're wasting your time. It may be an interesting intellectual distraction but it won't enhance your (fighting) skill one iota! In speaking to a female teacher here in China, I found that her husband had trained in baguazhang while in college. She asked if I had learned the “secret inner parts” of the art. Now, having practiced this discipline for nearly five decades, I wasn't altogether sure of what she was talking about. “Like telling the future”, she said. “My husband's teacher is very famous”, she explained. “He taught my husband how to predict the future by practicing baguazhang.”

Uh-huh. Small wonder that this magnificent art is all but dead today... The vast majority of baguazhang teachers in China have learned the outer form but they have no skill in the practical applications. That is, they have no real fighting skill. They'll demonstrate applications of movements but they don't look any different than applications as applied in numerous other forms of kung-fu. Where, I ask, is the signature footwork of bagua? Where is its special coiling power? And where, oh where, are these trigrams and hexagrams supposed to fit in? I think the death of real baguazhang has been brought about by too much intellectualizing, too much speculation about the positions of the moon and stars correspond to certain physical postures, and so on. It has come to taste like (as one of my dear friends describes it) a “crispy new age oatmeal cookie.”