Kan stands in the west in the Earlier Heaven arrangement attributed to Fuxi, opposite Li in the east. In the Later Heaven arrangement attributed to King Wen it takes the north, opposite Li in the south, so the two trigrams remain a facing pair in both orders while the axis they lie on rotates.
That is unusual and worth noting. Most trigrams change partners as well as position between the two arrangements. Kan and Li do not: they oppose each other in Earlier Heaven and again in Later Heaven, which is one reason the pair carries so much weight in the internal alchemy of the neidan tradition, where water and fire are the two that have to be made to change places.
In the Later Heaven order Kan is the phase Water outright, the only trigram to hold it, and belongs to the depth of winter and to midnight. From the Shuogua it takes the pig among animals and the ear among the parts of the body, hearing being the sense that works in the dark. In the family scheme Kan is the middle son, holding its single yang line in the central place.
The trigram's attribute, glossed as the Abysmal and as danger, is the yang line caught between two yin lines, strength held inside a yielding surface, which is also how the classical commentators describe water itself.
Sources Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in ChinaRichard J. Smith with The I Ching, or Book of ChangesRichard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), The Five "Confucian" ClassicsMichael Nylan