Kua 4 corresponds to Xun 巽, the Wind trigram — wood in its pliant, penetrating form, seated in the south-east of the Later Heaven arrangement — and belongs to the East Group of life numbers in Ba Zhai 八宅, the Eight Mansions school. Wind is the gentlest image in the trigram family, and the Kua that carries it is classically the number of influence without force. Like every Ming Gua it comes with a fixed eight-direction table: four favourable stars to orient toward, four unfavourable ones to give away to passive use. This guide lays out the Kua 4 table and its practice.
The four favourable directions of Kua 4
Kua 4's generating breath, Sheng Qi 生氣, falls due north — an assignment with its own elemental sense, since Kan's water is precisely what feeds Xun's wood. North is therefore the Kua 4 direction for effortful, ambitious work. Tian Yi 天醫, the heavenly doctor, falls in the south, the direction of recuperation and reliable help. Yan Nian 延年, longevity, falls in the east, presiding over the bonds that hold — marriage, family, working partnerships of long standing. Fu Wei 伏位 rests in the south-east, Xun's own palace, the seat of composure and incremental progress. The four together span north, south, east, and south-east — the East Four — and a Kua 4 person's strongest rooms, seats, and door aspects are drawn from them.
The four unfavourable directions of Kua 4
The unfavourable four for Kua 4 are north-west, south-west, west, and north-east. Huo Hai 禍害, mishaps, falls in the north-west — small frictions and wasted motion, the mildest of the four. Wu Gui 五鬼, the five ghosts, falls in the south-west, tied to quarrel, rumour, and misplaced trust. Liu Sha 六煞, the six killings, falls in the west — the star of entanglements and compounding trouble. Jue Ming 絕命, the severed fate, falls in the north-east, on Gen — and here the system's quiet regularity shows: for every Kua, the gravest direction belongs to the trigram that differs from one's own at the middle line alone, wood against the mountain's earth in this case. Sustained orientation, not brief passage, is what the doctrine weighs.
Desk, bed, and door for Kua 4
A Kua 4 desk faces north when the work demands push, or south-east when it demands steadiness — for a trigram whose gift is communication, practitioners often favour the latter for writing, negotiation, and teaching. The bed is placed so the crown of the head points east or south — the head's direction, in Ba Zhai, is the bed's direction. A main door facing any of the favourable four serves; the north-east, the severed fate, is the aspect to decline when a choice exists. The unfavourable sectors take the house's passive load — storage, bathrooms, laundry — under the press-the-bad rule, while the favourable sectors are reserved for the rooms in which a household is actually awake.
The character of Kua 4
In the Shuo Gua's family, Xun is the eldest daughter — wind, the gentle, that which enters everywhere. Kua 4 people are classically read as persuaders rather than commanders: adaptable, courteous, attentive to atmosphere, able to carry a point by patience that force could never carry. Wood bending is the element's image — growth that goes around obstruction rather than through it. The liabilities the tradition names are the same qualities overextended: indecision, diffuseness, agreement given too easily and regretted too late. Its counsel is a fixed root for the moving air — settled commitments, a desk kept toward the north's generating breath, and the south-east's own palace held as the place of return.
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