Kua 4

Meaning

Kua 4 is the Kua of Xun ☴, the wind, the trigram of the south-east and of the start of summer, of gentleness that reaches everywhere and of growth that keeps going. Among the numbers of the Lo Shu it holds the south-east corner; among the eight Kua it belongs to the East group, with 1, 3 and 9.

The Eight Mansions give Kua 4 its four supportive directions in this order: the north, its Sheng Qi, Growth, the best for work and new beginnings; the south, Tian Yi, Restoration, for rest and recovering one’s calm; the east, Yan Nian, Harmony, for relationships and a shared table; and the south-east, its own trigram’s place, Fu Wei, Stability, for quiet study. The four others, the north-west, the south-west, the west and the north-east, 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 4 something of Xun’s wind, influence by persistence rather than force, and of the 4 Green that has its home in the same corner, the star of letters and study. Its suggestions are ways to support that: a desk facing north for work that grows, a quiet corner in the south-east for reading and writing.

In practice

• At a desk: face the north, your Growth direction, for work and new projects; facing the south-east, your Stability, suits quiet study.
• For sleep: the tradition suggests the head of the bed towards the south, your Restoration direction, or towards the east, your Harmony.
• The door: a front door facing the north or the south 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-east, your Depletion direction; the north-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 4; 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 4 Green, such as 2005, 2014 or 2023, gives everyone 4 as their principal number; the yang count’s Kua 4 falls in those same years.
• In the Flying Stars the 4 Green has its home in the south-east, the Xun palace, the same place as Kua 4’s Stability: the star of letters, study and the arts, and of romance.
• In numerology 4 is the number of structure and steady work; the Kua’s 4 is the Lo Shu’s, the south-east and the wind, 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-east and faces north-west is a Xun house, of the East group; the school reads it, and the Kan, Li and Zhen houses, as suited to Kua 4.

In the classical table of the three Yuan, the yang count opens the Middle Yuan with Kua 4 in 1924, then goes back one a year; the yin count, going forward one a year, comes to 4 in years such as 1980, 1989 and 1998. 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 4 for the yang count when the digits of the solar year reduce to 7, since 11 − 7 = 4: 1987 gives 25, then 7. For the yin count it needs a year whose digits reduce to 9, since 4 + 9 = 13 reduces to 4: 1989 gives 27, then 9.

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