Kua 8

Meaning

Kua 8 is the Kua of Gen ☶, the mountain, the trigram of the north-east, where winter turns to spring, of stillness and of knowing when to stop. Among the numbers of the Lo Shu it holds the north-east corner; among the eight Kua it belongs to the West group, with 2, 6 and 7.

The Eight Mansions give Kua 8 its four supportive directions in this order: the south-west, its Sheng Qi, Growth, the best for work and new beginnings; the north-west, Tian Yi, Restoration, for rest and recovering one’s calm; the west, Yan Nian, Harmony, for relationships and a shared table; and the north-east, its own trigram’s place, Fu Wei, Stability, for quiet study. The four others, the south, the north, the east and the south-east, ask for more care: they suit a storeroom, a hallway or a room used briefly better than a desk or a bed.

Kua 8 is also the Kua that a 5 becomes for the yin count. A 5 has no trigram of its own, the Lo Shu’s centre having no direction, and most schools give it Gen, the earth of the north-east, since the 5 is earth too; so the yin count gives Kua 8 in two years out of nine. The tradition sees in Kua 8 something of the mountain’s steadiness, a calm others can lean on, and its suggestions support that rather than demand anything.

In practice

• At a desk: face the south-west, your Growth direction, for work and new projects; facing the north-east, your Stability, suits quiet study.
• For sleep: the tradition suggests the head of the bed towards the north-west, your Restoration direction, or towards the west, your Harmony.
• The door: a front door facing the south-west or the north-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 south-east, your Depletion direction; the south, 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 8; 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, everyone’s principal number is the year’s centre star, the same for both sexes; the yin count’s Kua is not that number, so a Kua 8 of the yin count can belong to someone whose Nine Star Ki number is 1, as in 1990, 1999 or 2008.
• In the Flying Stars the 8 White has its home in the north-east, the Gen palace, the same place as Kua 8’s Stability: the star of property and lasting gains, timely through Period 8, from 2004 to 2023, and just past its time now.
• In numerology 8 is the number of material achievement and of power; the Kua’s 8 is the Lo Shu’s, the north-east and the mountain, 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 north-east and faces south-west is a Gen house, of the West group; the school reads it, and the Qian, Kun and Dui houses, as suited to Kua 8.

In the classical table of the three Yuan, the yin count opens the Lower Yuan with Kua 8 in 1984, and opened the Upper Yuan in 1864 with a 5 that becomes 8; going forward one a year, it comes back to 8 in 1993 and 2002, and by the rule for 5 in 1990, 1999 and 2008. The rule for 5 is where the schools differ most: most give the yin count Gen and the yang count Kun, 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 8 for the yin count when the digits of the solar year reduce to 4, since 4 + 4 = 8, or to 1, since 4 + 1 = 5, which becomes 8: 1984 gives 22, then 4; 1990 gives 19, then 10, then 1. For the yang count it needs a year whose digits reduce to 3, since 11 − 3 = 8: 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