Kua 9

Meaning

Kua 9 is the Kua of Li ☲, fire, the trigram of the south and of midsummer, of brightness, clarity and warmth. Among the numbers of the Lo Shu it is the last, the one at the top of the square in the south, as the books draw it; among the eight Kua it belongs to the East group, with 1, 3 and 4.

The Eight Mansions give Kua 9 its four supportive directions in this order: the east, its Sheng Qi, Growth, the best for work and new beginnings; the south-east, Tian Yi, Restoration, for rest and recovering one’s calm; the north, Yan Nian, Harmony, for relationships and a shared table; and the south, its own trigram’s place, Fu Wei, Stability, for quiet study. The four others, the north-east, the west, the south-west and the north-west, 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 9 something of Li’s fire, the gift of seeing clearly and of warming those around, and of the 9 Purple at home in the same south, the star of Period 9, the twenty years we are in. Its suggestions give that brightness a steady place: a desk facing east for work that grows, the head of a bed towards the south-east for rest.

In practice

• At a desk: face the east, your Growth direction, for work and new projects; facing the south, your Stability, suits quiet study.
• For sleep: the tradition suggests the head of the bed towards the south-east, your Restoration direction, or towards the north, your Harmony.
• The door: a front door facing the east or the south-east 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-west, your Depletion direction; the north-east, 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 9; 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 9 Purple, such as 2000, 2009, 2018 or 2027, gives everyone 9 as their principal number; the yang count’s Kua 9 falls in those same years.
• In the Flying Stars the 9 Purple has its home in the south, the Li palace, the same place as Kua 9’s Stability: the star of celebration, recognition and joy, timely through Period 9, from 2024 to 2043.
• In numerology 9 is the number of completion and of generosity; the Kua’s 9 is the Lo Shu’s, the south and fire, 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 and faces north is a Li house, of the East group; the school reads it, and the Kan, Zhen and Xun houses, as suited to Kua 9.

In the classical table of the three Yuan, the yang count, going back one a year from 7 in 1984, comes to 9 in 1991, 2000 and 2009; the yin count, going forward one a year from 8, comes to it in 1985, 1994 and 2003. Kua 9 and Kua 1 are each other’s Harmony, as Li and Kan, fire and water, differ in every line. 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 9 for the yang count when the digits of the solar year reduce to 2, since 11 − 2 = 9: 2000 gives 2. For the yin count it needs a year whose digits reduce to 5, since 4 + 5 = 9: 1985 gives 23, then 5.

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