Kua 1

Meaning

Kua 1 is the Kua of Kan ☵, water, the trigram of the north, of depth and of the courage to keep flowing. Among the numbers of the Lo Shu it is the first, the one at the foot of the square in the north; among the eight Kua it belongs to the East group, with 3, 4 and 9, whose supportive directions are the north, the south, the east and the south-east.

The Eight Mansions give Kua 1 its four supportive directions in this order: the south-east, its Sheng Qi, Growth, the best for work and new beginnings; the east, Tian Yi, Restoration, for rest and recovering one’s calm; the south, Yan Nian, Harmony, for relationships and a shared table; and the north, its own trigram’s place, Fu Wei, Stability, for quiet study. The four others, the west, the north-east, the north-west and the south-west, ask for more care: they suit a storeroom, a hallway or a room used briefly better than a desk or a bed.

The tradition sees in Kua 1 something of its trigram’s water, a gift for listening and for finding a way round what blocks the path, and its suggestions are ways to support that, never demands. Like every Kua, it describes what suits, not a fixed fate: the same compass serves a student, a parent, a traveller, each in their own rooms.

In practice

• At a desk: face the south-east, your Growth direction, for work and new projects; facing the north, your Stability, suits quiet study.
• For sleep: the tradition suggests the head of the bed towards the east, your Restoration direction, or towards the south, your Harmony.
• The door: a front door facing the south-east or the east suits you best, the tradition says; a door is seldom chosen, so take it as a reason to keep that entrance bright and clear.
• Less suited: where you can choose, not sitting long facing the south-west, your Depletion direction; the west, the mildest of your challenging ones, suits storage.
• The home: a house of the East group, sitting in the north, the south, the east or the south-east, is read as suited to Kua 1; in a house of the other group, the tradition suggests using your own supportive directions within it.

Across traditions

• In Nine Star Ki, Japan’s nine-star astrology, a birth in a solar year whose centre star is the 1 White, such as 2008, 2017 or 2026, has 1 as its principal number for everyone; the yang count’s Kua 1 falls in those same years.
• In the Flying Stars the 1 White has its home in the north, the Kan palace, the same place as Kua 1’s Stability: the star of study, careers and journeys.
• In numerology 1 is the number of beginnings and of the self; the Kua’s 1 is the Lo Shu’s, the north and water, a different reading of the same digit.

Origin and history

The Eight Mansions school, whose classic is the Ba Zhai Ming Jing, a manual of the Qing dynasty, names a person’s Kua after the trigram and a house after the trigram it sits in, and reads the two together. A house that sits in the north and faces south, a Kan house, is the orientation most Chinese halls, temples and courtyard homes were built to, the ruler’s own, since he faced south to govern; a Kua 1 finds its group in it.

In the classical table of the three Yuan, the yang count opens the Upper Yuan with Kua 1 in 1864, the first year of the cycle of 180 years, and comes back to it every nine years; the yin count, which goes forward one a year from 5 in 1864, comes to Kua 1 in years such as 1986, 1995 and 2004. The count itself is classically a matter of sex, yang for a man and yin for a woman; Ulune asks for the count, only as an option, and shows both Kua without it.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune gives Kua 1 for the yang count when the digits of the solar year reduce to 1: 11 − 1 = 10, which reduces to 1 again. For 1990, 1 + 9 + 9 + 0 = 19, then 1 + 9 = 10, then 1. For the yin count it needs a year whose digits reduce to 6, since 4 + 6 = 10 also reduces to 1: 1995 gives 24, then 6.

The year is the solar year, which turns at Lichun, around 4 February: a birth on 1 February 1990 belongs to the solar year 1989, and so to Kua 2 for the yang count. A birth on Lichun’s own day without a time gets a note saying the year, and so the Kua, could be the one before.

Correspondences