Kua Number
Enter your birth date to find your life trigram and your good and bad directions in Eight Mansions feng shui.
1
坎 Water
East group · North
Year counted 1990 庚午
Your eight directions
- Northwest六煞Six Killings
- North伏位Stillness
- Northeast五鬼Five Ghosts
- West禍害Mishap
- 坎Kua 1
- East天醫Heavenly Doctor
- Southwest絕命Severed Life
- South延年Long Life
- Southeast生氣Life Energy
Good directions
- 生氣 Life Energy
- Southeast · The best of the four good directions.
- 天醫 Heavenly Doctor
- East · A good direction.
- 延年 Long Life
- South · A good direction.
- 伏位 Stillness
- North · Your own direction, steady and good.
Bad directions
- 絕命 Severed Life
- Southwest · The worst of the four bad directions.
- 五鬼 Five Ghosts
- Northeast · A bad direction.
- 六煞 Six Killings
- Northwest · A bad direction.
- 禍害 Mishap
- West · A bad direction.
One school’s traditional method, shown for culture, not advice.
Understanding your Kua number
In the Eight Mansions school of feng shui, each person has a life trigram worked out from birth year and sex. It places you in the East or West group and gives you four good and four bad directions. Our method follows 《八宅明鏡》 for the count and 《協紀辨方書》 for the directions.
How it works
- Fix the yearThe year begins at 立春. A birth before it counts in the year before.
- Find the sixty-year cycleThree cycles run in turn: upper, middle and lower. 1984 opened the lower cycle.
- Count the palacesMen start from 1, 4 or 7 and count back. Women start from 5, 2 or 8 and count forward.
- Lodge the centrePalace 5 has no trigram, so men use 坤 and women use 艮.
- Compare the trigramsThe lines that differ between your trigram and each direction name the star there.
How to read it
- Note your groupEast or West tells you which four directions suit you.
- Read the mapGold cells are your good directions. The map has north at the top.
- Start with 生氣Tradition uses it for the main door, desk or bed where that is possible.
- Take it lightlyA real home needs a full reading, and this page is one school’s method.
Our method
- Count
- 《八宅明鏡》 gives the starting palaces and worked examples, which our tests repeat. It dates 天啟四年 (1624) to the lower cycle and 康熙二十三年 (1684) to the upper.
- Variant
- 《選擇要略》, on marriage matching, starts men from 7, 1 and 4. 《八宅明鏡》 and 《星平會海》 use 1, 4 and 7, as nearly all later books do, so we follow them.
- Stars
- 卷二 of 《協紀辨方書》 defines each star by which lines change. We compute them from that rule and check the result against the 歌訣.
- Text correction
- One online copy reads 「震延生禍絕五六天」. That breaks the rule in 卷二, so we take it as a slip for 五天六.
- Year start
- We use 立春. On that very day the hour decides, and the page says so.
Common questions
Why does sex change the result?
The method counts men and women in opposite directions. It uses birth sex as the old texts do.
Is this the same as Flying Star feng shui?
No. Eight Mansions and Flying Star are separate schools.
My Kua differs from another site. Why?
Most often the site changes year at 1 January or at the lunar new year rather than at 立春.
Is my date saved?
No. It stays in your browser.
Sources
- 《八宅明鏡》上卷, online transcription; not yet checked against a printed edition.
- 《欽定協紀辨方書》卷二 (大遊年變卦), Siku Quanshu text on Chinese Wikisource.
- 《星平會海》卷五 (三元男女合婚定局), online transcription.
- 《選擇要略》中卷, Chinese Wikisource, for the variant.