Baguazhang, the eight trigram palm, is one of the three arts conventionally grouped as the internal family of Chinese martial arts, alongside taijiquan and xingyiquan. Its defining practice is walking a circle: the practitioner moves continuously around a centre, changing direction and position through a set of palm changes, and almost everything the art does is built out of that walk rather than out of fixed stances. The name is taken from the eight trigrams of the Yijing, and the palm changes are named for and mapped onto them, so that the art presents itself as the trigrams performed rather than merely illustrated. What the atlas records here is the mapping the tradition asserts, which is the reason a martial art belongs in a religion catalogue at all: the eight trigrams are a cosmological scheme, and this is a body practice that claims to enact one.
Facts
Disputed
Origin PeriodBaguazhang is conventionally traced to Dong Haichuan, whose documented public teaching in Beijing dates the art's public emergence to the second half of the nineteenth century, though his own birth year is reported inconsistently, either 1797 or 1813, and some traditional teachers regard him not as the art's inventor but as the first to publicly transmit a practice previously taught behind closed doors within a Taoist lineage. The range recorded here spans the documented nineteenth century public emergence. Origin AccountTraditionally traced to Taoist circle walking practice older than the art 1Tradition: Baguazhang Every documented lineage runs back to Dong Haichuan in Beijing in the 1860s. Circle walking does have a place in Taoist meditative practice, so the claim is not implausible in the way the Yue Fei attribution is, but no link between that practice and this art before Dong is documented. Camps exist: practitioners hold the transmission real, historians treat it as a lineage claim. Structure
StructureEight palm changes, named for and mapped onto the eight trigrams 2Tradition: Baguazhang Origins
Place of Origin Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 2 Learn More
Walking the Circle
Almost everything baguazhang does is built out of one thing: continuous walking around a circle. The practitioner moves around a centre, turning the body toward it, and changes direction and position through a set of palm changes. Stances are transitional rather than held, and the art's characteristic movement is spiral and evasive rather than linear.
The name means eight trigram palm, and the palm changes are named for and mapped onto the eight trigrams of the Yijing. That is the claim the atlas is recording, and it is the reason a martial art appears in a catalogue of religion at all. The eight trigrams are a cosmological scheme with a long life in Chinese divination, ritual and philosophy, and baguazhang presents itself as that scheme performed with a body rather than illustrated with a diagram. Whether the mapping is structural or applied afterwards is a question practitioners themselves discuss.
The circle is also where the art touches Daoist practice most directly. Walking a circuit while turning the gaze inward is attested in Daoist meditative and ritual traditions, and the connection is claimed in the art's own account of itself. What the historical record supports about that connection is a separate matter, treated in the second article on this page.
Dong Haichuan and the Limits of the Lineage Story
Every documented baguazhang lineage runs back to one man. Dong Haichuan taught in Beijing from about the 1860s, and the branches practised today descend through his students, of whom Cheng Tinghua and Yin Fu are the best known. Before Dong the record is silent.
The tradition fills that silence with an account of Daoist teachers in the mountains from whom Dong is said to have received the art. Historians treat this as a lineage claim rather than as settled history. It is a familiar shape: a founder who receives a complete system from reclusive adepts, giving the art an ancestry older and holier than its documented one. Meir Shahar's work on the Shaolin monastery shows the same pattern operating on the other side of the internal and external divide, where a monastery's martial reputation acquired religious genealogy over time.
The category of internal arts is itself later than it looks. The grouping of baguazhang with taijiquan and xingyiquan was made current in the early twentieth century by Sun Lutang, who trained in all three and wrote them up as one family. The internal label goes back further, to a 1669 epitaph by Huang Zongxi that set an internal school against Shaolin, but the three art grouping is modern. Douglas Wile's study of the late Qing taiji literature sets out how much of what is now taken as ancient doctrine in these arts was composed or systematised in that period.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
One of the eight palm changes is named for and mapped onto this trigram, Dui, whose attribute is Lake.
One of the eight palm changes is named for and mapped onto this trigram, Gen, whose attribute is Mountain.
One of the eight palm changes is named for and mapped onto this trigram, Kan, whose attribute is Water.
One of the eight palm changes is named for and mapped onto this trigram, Kun, whose attribute is Earth.
One of the eight palm changes is named for and mapped onto this trigram, Li, whose attribute is Fire.
One of the eight palm changes is named for and mapped onto this trigram, Qian, whose attribute is Heaven.
The art claims a Taoist origin for its circle walking, and Taoist cosmology supplies the trigram scheme it is built on.
One of the eight palm changes is named for and mapped onto this trigram, Xun, whose attribute is Wind.
One of the eight palm changes is named for and mapped onto this trigram, Zhen, whose attribute is Thunder.
Derived From
Baguazhang takes its name and the organisation of its palm changes from the eight trigrams of the Yijing.
Sibling Of
One of the three arts grouped as the internal family, a grouping made current by Sun Lutang in the early twentieth century.
Both are internal arts and the two were often taught together; several nineteenth century Beijing teachers held both lineages.
Sources
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