Liu Sha 六煞, the six killings, is the third of the four unfavourable Ba Zhai directions. The Ba Zhai Ming Jing pairs it with Wen Qu 文曲 — the water star of literary refinement, an odd patron for an affliction until its manner is understood. Liu Sha does not strike; it entangles. Its portfolio is the dispute that will not close, scandal and gossip, romantic complication, and self-undoing — trouble in water's style, arriving by seepage rather than blow. The six of the name counts the fronts on which such trouble multiplies; the practical doctrine is drainage.
The portfolio: entanglement in water’s style
Where Tiger-natured afflictions collide, Liu Sha soaks. Under it the manuals file lawsuits and grievances that outlive their causes, reputations damaged by talk rather than deed, affairs and infatuations that complicate settled lives, debts of favour that compound, and the general condition the texts call self-undoing — a person's own appetites and evasions becoming the current that carries them off course. Wen Qu explains the mechanism: the star governs eloquence and charm, and Liu Sha is those gifts turned solvent — persuasion becoming seduction, fluency becoming gossip, the social water in which small troubles dissolve and spread everywhere. Its damage is rarely a single event; it is a saturation.
Where Liu Sha falls for each Kua
For Kua 1 the six killings occupy the north-west; for Kua 2, the south; Kua 3, the north-east; Kua 4, the west; Kua 6, the north; Kua 7, the south-east; Kua 8, the east; and Kua 9, the south-west. (Kua 5 reads as Kua 2 for men, Kua 8 for women.) In severity it sits between Huo Hai's grinding mildness and Wu Gui's combustion — most lineages rank it third — but its character makes ranking slippery: for public figures, and for anyone whose life runs on reputation, the entangling sha can cost more than the fiercer ones, and the manuals adjust their triage accordingly.
Drainage: what to put on the six killings
Liu Sha's classical assignment follows its element with the same elegance as Wu Gui's stove: water functions drain the water sha. The bathroom is the canonical placement — the sector's dissolving tendency spent daily down the pipes — with laundry, utility sinks, and drains generally serving the same office. Beyond plumbing it takes the standard passive load: storage, the unused room, weight. What must stay off it is anything already prone to entanglement: the bed of a wandering spouse is the manuals' blunt example, but the modern list includes the desk where contracts are drafted and the corner where the household argues about money. And no water features — the aquarium or fountain that blesses a favourable sector feeds this one's disease.
The conduct clause: Liu Sha’s honest limit
More than any other Ba Zhai energy, the six killings comes with a conduct clause, and the classical commentators state it plainly: no orientation causes an affair, a lawsuit, or a scandal — it only lowers or raises the water level in which such things breed. A person of settled habits sleeping on Liu Sha may notice nothing worse than complicated dreams; a person already wading in entanglements will find the current stronger. The school's remedy is therefore double. Arrange the house — drain the sector, move the daily functions — and mind the conduct the sector tests: discretion in speech, cleanliness in dealings, the closing of open loops. Feng shui, the texts say here with unusual directness, assists the life it is given.
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