Bagua Sword (八卦劍) — Baguazhang

八卦劍 (Bāguà Jiàn, "Eight-Trigram Sword") is the **straight-sword (劍) form of **Baguazhang, set down by Sun Lutang (孫祿堂) in his 八卦劍學 ("A Study of Bagua Sword," 1927). Like the empty-hand art, it is built on the circle: its movements are grouped into eight trigram-sections (八卦), and the blade is carried through the same body-turning and circle-walking that drives the Eight Palms — the palm-changes extended through a length of steel. Its 31 named postures read as classical jian poetry: sweeping the moon at the horizon, the immortal carrying his sword on his back, the meteor chasing the moon, the flower hidden beneath the leaf.

What it trains

• The sword as an extension of the palm — Bagua's hooking, threading, and changing hands re-expressed through the point and edge of the jian

• Circle-walking with the blade — every section is walked, turned, and re-aimed on the circle rather than along a line

• Light, mobile point-work — the straight sword lives by its tip; the form floats between its named postures

• The eight-trigram structure — each trigram its own short sequence, the whole a circuit of the eight

The form — eight trigrams (劍譜)

The posture list from Sun Lutang's 八卦劍學 (1927); the English are the wiki's own working glosses.

See also

Bagua (八卦掌) — the style, the circle, and the lineage

八大掌 The Eight Palms — the empty-hand core the sword extends

Sun Lutang (孫祿堂) — author of 八卦劍學

Cheng Tinghua (程廷華) — the Cheng-style line Sun's Bagua descends from

Sources

[1] 孫祿堂 (Sun Lutang), 八卦劍學 (1927) — the posture sequence reproduced here under fair-use citation, with the wiki's own glosses. Public domain by age (Sun d. 1933). Open bilingual edition: Brennan Translation.

[2] Video: Sun-style and Cheng-style 八卦劍 demonstrations are indexed on the Bagua on Film page.