Feng Shui Basics — Your Kua Number and the Lucky Directions of Eight Mansions
Feng Shui — literally 'wind and water' — is an ancient Eastern wisdom for reading the energy of land and space to find the places that benefit a person. Among its many branches, the most practical for an individual is Eight Mansions Feng Shui, which calculates each person's innate Kua number and points out their auspicious directions.
What Is Feng Shui?
Feng Shui is a traditional geomancy that holds that the placement and orientation of a home, a grave, or a city influence the fortune of those who live there. Its branches range from Form School Feng Shui, which reads the flow of great mountains and waters, to Compass School Feng Shui, which weighs the arrangement of directions and energy. Among these, Eight Mansions Feng Shui divides the fortune of the eight directions based on a person's birth year, and it is widely used as a practical method that is easy to apply in daily life.
What Is the Kua Number?
The starting point of Eight Mansions Feng Shui is the Kua number. Using your birth year (by the lunar calendar) and gender, a set formula yields a single number from 1 to 9 — with 5 replaced by 2 for men and 8 for women. This number assigns you a trigram of the Bagua and an element, from which your auspicious directions and directions to avoid are drawn. This is why birth year and gender are essential for a Feng Shui reading.
The East and West Four Houses
By Kua number, people fall into two broad groups: the East Four Houses (dongsamyeong) and the West Four Houses (seosamyeong). If your Kua number is 1, 3, 4, or 9, you belong to the East group and are best suited to the East, South, North, and Southeast; if it is 2, 6, 7, or 8, you belong to the West group and are best suited to the West, Northwest, Southwest, and Northeast. Knowing even this broad division helps you sense which directions are in tune with you.
The Four Lucky Directions and the Ones to Avoid
Eight Mansions Feng Shui gives each Kua number four auspicious directions: broadly, Sheng Qi for prosperity and achievement, Tian Yi for health and harmony, Yan Nian for relationships and stability, and Fu Wei for preserving peace. Conversely, it also identifies the inauspicious directions, including Jue Ming, the direction most to be avoided. The practice of Eight Mansions Feng Shui is to align things like the head of your bed, the way your desk faces, and the direction of your entrance with your lucky directions.
Putting Directions to Work in Daily Life
Applying Feng Shui to everyday life is surprisingly simple: sleep with your head toward a lucky direction, and arrange your seat so that you face a lucky direction when studying or working. Bear in mind, though, that Feng Shui is not a fixed fate but a reference wisdom for turning the energy of a space in your favor. Rather than overhauling your home, it is enough to adjust orientation within what you can reasonably do.
Feng Shui is an age-old wisdom of living that draws the energy of land and space to your benefit. If you're curious about your Kua number and your four lucky directions, check your own Eight Mansions Feng Shui directions using your birth year and gender.