Kua 9 corresponds to Li 離, the Fire trigram — the clinging brightness, the middle daughter of the trigram family — seated in the south of the Later Heaven arrangement. It closes the East Group of life numbers in Ba Zhai 八宅, the Eight Mansions school, alongside Kua 1, 3, and 4. A Ming Gua is derived from birth year and sex and read as a fixed eight-direction table — four favourable stars, four adverse ones — that classical practice applies to desks, beds, doors, and the allocation of rooms. This guide gives that table as it falls for Kua 9.
The four favourable directions of Kua 9
Kua 9's generating breath, Sheng Qi 生氣, falls in the east — wood feeding fire, in the element logic — and it is the direction the school assigns to enterprise, recognition, and work meant for daylight. Tian Yi 天醫, the heavenly doctor, falls in the south-east, the direction of recuperation and support. Yan Nian 延年, longevity, falls in the north — Kan, Li's full opposite, which is the structural signature of this star: the trigram with all three lines reversed rules the lasting bonds for every Kua, here binding fire to water across the compass's main axis. Fu Wei 伏位 rests in the south, Li's own palace, the seat of composure and continuity. The favourable four — east, south-east, north, south — are the East Four set entire.
The four unfavourable directions of Kua 9
The unfavourable four for Kua 9 are north-east, west, south-west, and north-west. Huo Hai 禍害, mishaps, falls in the north-east — the mildest star, friction rather than harm. Wu Gui 五鬼, the five ghosts, falls in the west, classically tied to quarrels, rumour, and loss through others' hands. Liu Sha 六煞, the six killings, falls in the south-west — entanglement and self-inflicted complication. Jue Ming 絕命, the severed fate, falls in the north-west, where Li's fire meets Qian's metal — the furnace and the blade again, the same controlling clash that gives Kua 6 its severed fate in the south. As throughout Ba Zhai, these are weightings for chronic orientation — the doctrine attaches no significance to passing through a direction.
Desk, bed, and door for Kua 9
A Kua 9 desk faces east when the work seeks growth and audience, south when it consolidates what reputation has already gathered. The bed is set with the crown of the head toward the north — Yan Nian, the axis of lasting bonds — or the south for plain stability; the north-west is the direction the manuals rule out for sleep altogether. Doors facing any of the East Four are preferred. Fire's rooms matter: practitioners place a Kua 9 household's bright, public functions — the desk that meets clients, the table that hosts — in favourable sectors, and press bathrooms, storage, and utility into the adverse ones. Fu Wei at the south, Li's own palace, is the seat the school recommends when what the day needs is not brilliance but calm.
The character of Kua 9
Li is the middle daughter of the Shuo Gua's family — fire, the clinging, brightness that lives by what it rests upon. Kua 9 people are classically read as the visible ones: expressive, discerning, quick to grasp and quicker to illuminate, drawn to work where clarity itself is the product — teaching, design, advocacy, the stage in any of its forms. Fire's virtue is that it shows things as they are; its liability is that it needs fuel. The tradition cautions the Li native against volatility, vanity, and burning attention it has not banked, and its counsel is the hearth rather than the flare — the east's generating breath for effort, the south's own palace for 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