Kua 3

Meaning

Kua 3 is the Kua of Zhen ☳, thunder, the trigram of the east and of spring, of the first movement that wakes things up. Among the numbers of the Lo Shu it holds the east, the middle of the square’s left side as the books draw it, south at the top; among the eight Kua it belongs to the East group, with 1, 4 and 9.

The Eight Mansions give Kua 3 its four supportive directions in this order: the south, its Sheng Qi, Growth, the best for work and new beginnings; the north, Tian Yi, Restoration, for rest and recovering one’s calm; the south-east, Yan Nian, Harmony, for relationships and a shared table; and the east, its own trigram’s place, Fu Wei, Stability, for quiet study. The four others, the south-west, the north-west, the north-east and the west, ask for more care: they suit a storeroom, a hallway or a room used briefly better than a desk or a bed.

Kua 3 has one feature no other Kua shares: the yin and the yang counts give it in the same years, those whose digits reduce to 8, so that a birth in 1988, 1997 or 2006 has Kua 3 whichever count it is read by. The tradition sees in it something of Zhen’s thunder, initiative and the energy to begin, and its suggestions give that energy a direction rather than a rule.

In practice

• At a desk: face the south, your Growth direction, for work and new projects; facing the east, your Stability, suits quiet study.
• For sleep: the tradition suggests the head of the bed towards the north, your Restoration direction, or towards the south-east, your Harmony.
• The door: a front door facing the south or the north 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 west, your Depletion direction; the south-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 3; 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 3 Jade, such as 2006, 2015 or 2024, gives everyone 3 as their principal number; Kua 3 falls in those same years, for both counts.
• In the Flying Stars the 3 Jade has its home in the east, the Zhen palace, the same place as Kua 3’s Stability: the star of drive, ambition and advancement won by effort.
• In numerology 3 is the number of expression and of joy in creating; the Kua’s 3 is the Lo Shu’s, the east and thunder, 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 east and faces west is a Zhen house, of the East group; the school reads it, and the Kan, Li and Xun houses, as suited to Kua 3.

In the classical table of the three Yuan, the yang count goes back one a year from 1 in 1864 and the yin count forward one a year from 5, so the two meet every nine years, always on 3: the books’ tables show the two columns side by side, the same number on the same line once in nine. 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, which for these years are the same.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune gives Kua 3 for the yang count when the digits of the solar year reduce to 8, since 11 − 8 = 3, and for the yin count in the same years, since 4 + 8 = 12, which reduces to 3: 1988 gives 26, then 8. No other number satisfies both counts at once, and a 5 can never be Kua 3, the yang count taking 2 and the yin count 8.

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