Kua 2

Meaning

Kua 2 is the Kua of Kun ☷, the earth, the trigram of the south-west, of receptivity, care and patience. Among the numbers of the Lo Shu it holds the south-west corner; among the eight Kua it belongs to the West group, with 6, 7 and 8, whose supportive directions are the west, the north-west, the south-west and the north-east.

The Eight Mansions give Kua 2 its four supportive directions in this order: the north-east, its Sheng Qi, Growth, the best for work and new beginnings; the west, Tian Yi, Restoration, for rest and recovering one’s calm; the north-west, Yan Nian, Harmony, for relationships and a shared table; and the south-west, its own trigram’s place, Fu Wei, Stability, for quiet study. The four others, the east, the south-east, the south and the north, ask for more care: they suit a storeroom, a hallway or a room used briefly better than a desk or a bed.

Kua 2 is also the Kua that a 5 becomes for the yang count. A 5 has no trigram of its own, the Lo Shu’s centre having no direction, and most schools give it Kun, the earth of the south-west, since the 5 is earth too; so the yang count gives Kua 2 in two years out of nine. The tradition sees in Kua 2 something of Kun’s patience, the ground others build on, and its suggestions support that rather than demand anything.

In practice

• At a desk: face the north-east, your Growth direction, for work and new projects; facing the south-west, your Stability, suits quiet study.
• For sleep: the tradition suggests the head of the bed towards the west, your Restoration direction, or towards the north-west, your Harmony.
• The door: a front door facing the north-east or the west 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 north, your Depletion direction; the east, the mildest of your challenging ones, suits storage.
• The home: a house of the West group, sitting in the west, the north-west, the south-west or the north-east, is read as suited to Kua 2; 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 solar year whose centre star is the 2 Black, such as 2007, 2016 or 2025, gives everyone 2 as their principal number; the yang count’s Kua 2 falls in those years, and in the years of the 5 Yellow too, such as 2004, 2013 and 2022, which Nine Star Ki keeps as 5.
• In the Flying Stars the 2 Black has its home in the south-west, the Kun palace, the same place as Kua 2’s Stability: the star of land, property and care.
• In numerology 2 is the number of partnership and of listening; the Kua’s 2 is the Lo Shu’s, the south-west and the earth, 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. A house that sits in the south-west and faces north-east is a Kun house, of the West group, the group of Kua 2; the school reads it as suited to the four Kua of that group.

In the classical table of the three Yuan, the yin count opens the Middle Yuan with Kua 2 in 1924 and goes forward one a year; the yang count, going back one a year from 1 in 1864, comes to 2 in years such as 1980, 1989 and 1998, and to the 5 that becomes 2 in 1986, 1995 and 2004. The rule for 5 is where the schools differ most: most give the yang count Kun and the yin count Gen, as Ulune does, and a few read it otherwise. 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 2 for the yang count when the digits of the solar year reduce to 9, since 11 − 9 = 2, or to 6, since 11 − 6 = 5, which becomes 2: 1989 gives 27, then 9; 1995 gives 24, then 6. For the yin count it needs a year whose digits reduce to 7, since 4 + 7 = 11 reduces to 2: 1987 gives 25, then 7.

The year is the solar year, which turns at Lichun, around 4 February: a birth in January belongs to the solar year before. 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