Kua 3 corresponds to Zhen 震, the Thunder trigram — arousal, spring, the first movement of wood — seated in the east of the Later Heaven arrangement. It belongs to the East Group of life numbers in Ba Zhai 八宅, the Eight Mansions school, alongside Kua 1, 4, and 9. The Ming Gua is derived once, from birth year and sex, and does not change; what it yields is a compass table — four favourable directions and four unfavourable ones — that classical practice treats as the person's permanent frame of orientation. Here is that table for Kua 3, with its applications.
The four favourable directions of Kua 3
For Kua 3 the generating breath, Sheng Qi 生氣, falls due south — the strongest of the four favourable stars, assigned to vigour, enterprise, and visibility. Tian Yi 天醫, the heavenly doctor, falls in the north, the direction the tradition reserves for recovery, calm, and timely support. Yan Nian 延年, longevity, falls in the south-east, governing the durable bonds — partnership, family concord, alliances that hold. Fu Wei 伏位, the stable position, rests in the east, Zhen's own palace, and favours continuity: study, routine, the slow accumulation of skill. As with every East Group Kua, the favourable four are drawn from north, south, east, and south-east — which is why East Group people are classically matched to East Four houses.
The four unfavourable directions of Kua 3
Kua 3's unfavourable four are south-west, north-west, north-east, and west. Huo Hai 禍害, mishaps, falls in the south-west — the lightest of the burdens, a direction of friction and small waste. Wu Gui 五鬼, the five ghosts, falls in the north-west, linked with discord, suspicion, and loss through others. Liu Sha 六煞, the six killings, falls in the north-east — entanglement, scandal, injuries of one's own making. Jue Ming 絕命, the severed fate, falls in the west, where Dui's metal meets Zhen's wood — the axe to the tree, in the old image. The schools agree that Huo Hai is mildest and Jue Ming gravest; they differ on the middle two, some weighting the five ghosts heavier, others the six killings — a genuine divergence in the classical literature rather than an error in any one table.
Putting the table to work
The desk of a Kua 3 person faces south for enterprise or east for steady study — the facing is where the eyes rest, not where the chair stands. The bed is set with the crown of the head toward the south-east for the sake of the household's bonds, or the east for plain stability; the west, the severed fate, is the one bed direction the manuals rule out entirely. Doors follow the same preference. The unfavourable sectors are not wasted space — press the bad, 壓凶, is the operative rule: bathrooms, storerooms, and utility functions belong there precisely because they are occupied briefly and passively. A Zhen native's active rooms — office, bedroom, the seat at the table — are what deserve the favourable half of the compass.
The character of Kua 3
Zhen is the eldest son in the Shuo Gua's family — thunder, the arousing, the force that breaks winter. Kua 3 people are classically read as initiators: decisive, candid, quick to act and quick to speak, the first into any undertaking and the least comfortable waiting. Wood rising is the element's image — growth that pushes upward through obstruction. The tradition's cautions follow the same grain: impatience, temper, beginnings without endings. Its counsel is to pair the thunder with a keel — projects with fixed completion points, counsel taken before speed, and the east, Zhen's own stable palace, kept for the desk at which long work is actually finished rather than merely begun.
References
Canonical sources that inform this guide.
- Feng shui · WIKIPEDIA
- The Living Earth Manual of Feng Shui · BOOK
- Ba Zhai Ming Jing (八宅明鏡) · BOOK