Kua 7

Meaning

Kua 7 is the Kua of Dui ☱, the lake, the trigram of the west and of mid-autumn, of joy, conversation and openness. Among the numbers of the Lo Shu it holds the west, the middle of the square’s right side as the books draw it, south at the top; among the eight Kua it belongs to the West group, with 2, 6 and 8.

The Eight Mansions give Kua 7 its four supportive directions in this order: the north-west, its Sheng Qi, Growth, the best for work and new beginnings; the south-west, Tian Yi, Restoration, for rest and recovering one’s calm; the north-east, Yan Nian, Harmony, for relationships and a shared table; and the west, its own trigram’s place, Fu Wei, Stability, for quiet study. The four others, the north, the south, the south-east and the 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 7 something of Dui’s lake, ease with people and the pleasure of sharing, and of the 7 Red at home in the same west, the star of speech and charm. Its suggestions give that warmth a good setting: a table for friends towards the north-east, a desk facing the north-west for work that grows.

In practice

• At a desk: face the north-west, your Growth direction, for work and new projects; facing the west, your Stability, suits quiet study.
• For sleep: the tradition suggests the head of the bed towards the south-west, your Restoration direction, or towards the north-east, your Harmony.
• The door: a front door facing the north-west or the south-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 east, your Depletion direction; the north, 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 7; 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 7 Red, such as 2002, 2011 or 2020, gives everyone 7 as their principal number; the yang count’s Kua 7 falls in those same years.
• In the Flying Stars the 7 Red has its home in the west, the Dui palace, the same place as Kua 7’s Stability: the star of speech, charm and pleasure, timely through Period 7, from 1984 to 2003.
• In numerology 7 is the number of reflection and of the inner search; the Kua’s 7 is the Lo Shu’s, the west and the lake, 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 west and faces east is a Dui house, of the West group; the school reads it, and the Qian, Kun and Gen houses, as suited to Kua 7.

In the classical table of the three Yuan, the yang count opens the Lower Yuan with Kua 7 in 1984, the year Period 7 began, then goes back one a year, so that 1993 and 2002 are 7 again; the yin count, going forward one a year from 8 in 1984, comes to 7 in 1992, 2001 and 2010. 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 7 for the yang count when the digits of the solar year reduce to 4, since 11 − 4 = 7: 1984 gives 22, then 4. For the yin count it needs a year whose digits reduce to 3, since 4 + 3 = 7: 1992 gives 21, then 3.

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