Liu Sha · Entanglement

Meaning

Liu Sha, 六煞 liùshà, the six imbalances, is the third of the four challenging mansions: for each Kua, a direction the tradition reads as entanglements and misunderstandings, threads that knot when they are pulled. It suggests that side for passing through rather than for sitting, a corridor, a landing, an entrance hall.

Ulune calls it Entanglement and glosses its classical name by its meaning: imbalance, things slightly out of true, a conversation where each side hears something else. Its gift is that a passage needs nothing more from it than to be crossed; a home is full of such places, and the Eight Mansions give them this side. Its difficulty, for a chair or a bed placed facing it for long, is a little confusion the tradition would rather spare.

Liu Sha is the direction whose trigram differs from the person’s in its top and bottom lines, the middle one unchanged, always across the groups: Kan ☵ and Qian ☰, Kun ☷ and Li ☲, Zhen ☳ and Gen ☶, Xun ☴ and Dui ☱. So Kua 1 and 6, 2 and 9, 3 and 8, 4 and 7 are each other’s Liu Sha.

In practice

• Passing through: the tradition suggests your Liu Sha for a hallway, a landing or an entrance more than for a desk or a sofa; a Kua 1 keeps the north-west for it, a Kua 2 the south.
• Less suited: a long conversation or a meeting is better held facing Yan Nian, the tradition says, than Liu Sha.
• The home: when a home’s front or back is your Entanglement, the Home lens says so; the tradition never asks anyone to move, and suggests using your own supportive directions within it.
• Two people: a direction can be one person’s Liu Sha and the other’s Yan Nian; the Relationship lens keeps it for the second person’s own corner rather than for what the two share.
• The years: the Cycles lens reads the year’s stars over this side too, and a supportive star can make it easier for a year.

Across traditions

• In the Flying Stars Wen Qu, the star the Ba Zhai Ming Jing gives Liu Sha, is the classical name of the 4 Green, the star of letters and study; in folk belief Wenqu xing is the star of scholars. The same name has a gentle role there and a challenging one here.
• In Western astrology confusion and misunderstanding are often read in Neptune’s fog or in a strained Mercury; Liu Sha is not a planet but a side of the room, for one person.
• In everyday building the corridors and halls that join the rooms are the passages architects call circulation; the Eight Mansions give each person their own side for them.

Origin and history

The Ba Zhai Ming Jing, the Qing-dynasty manual of the Eight Mansions, sets Liu Sha seventh in its table, third of the four challenging mansions, and gives it the star Wen Qu. In the classical method that finds the mansions by changing a trigram’s lines one at a time, Liu Sha comes on the fourth change, after the top, the middle, the bottom and the middle lines have turned, which leaves the top and the bottom lines different.

Its classical name joins six, a number of the earth in the old cosmology, and sha, a sharp or unbalancing force, and translations have often made it sound fiercer than the school reads it. Ulune follows the meaning, imbalance and entanglement, and keeps the direction for what passes through.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune reads Liu Sha from the classical table of the Eight Mansions, the seventh of each Kua’s eight directions. The table follows the line rule exactly: Liu Sha is the direction whose trigram differs from the Kua’s own in the top and bottom lines, and Ulune’s tests check that the table reads the same both ways and keeps each Kua’s four challenging directions in the other group.

Correspondences