Wu Gui 五鬼, the five ghosts, is the second of the four unfavourable Ba Zhai directions and the most theatrical. The Ba Zhai Ming Jing pairs it with Lian Zhen 廉貞, the fire star of the Dipper, and its portfolio burns accordingly: quarrels that escalate, betrayal by trusted hands, theft, restless nights, and the classical warning of loss by fire. The ghosts of the name are the household's invisible troublemakers — the misplaced object, the message that never arrives, the argument nobody remembers starting. Serious, but handleable: fire, the tradition notes, is the affliction most easily pressed into service.
The portfolio: quarrels, betrayal, and the unquiet house
Wu Gui's file is interpersonal combustion. Under it the manuals place the escalating quarrel — distinct from Huo Hai's flare-and-fade friction — the servant or partner who turns, gossip inside one's own walls, objects that vanish, and the nocturnal register the name advertises: unquiet sleep, night noises, the feeling of a house not entirely one's own. Lian Zhen's fire supplies the signature: Wu Gui troubles leap, spread, and consume attention wildly out of proportion to their beginnings. The commentators' diagnostic is useful — when a household's conflicts feel sourceless, each person certain the other started it, the old texts would ask first what daily function had drifted onto the five ghosts.
Where Wu Gui falls for each Kua
For Kua 1 the five ghosts occupy the north-east; for Kua 2, the south-east; Kua 3, the north-west; Kua 4, the south-west; Kua 6, the east; Kua 7, the south; Kua 8, the north; and Kua 9, the west. (Kua 5 reads as Kua 2 for men, Kua 8 for women.) It ranks second-worst in most lineages — graver than Huo Hai and Liu Sha's daily wear, spared only Jue Ming's severity — and the triage order follows: keep the bed and desk off it before worrying about the milder two, and surrender it to the ghosts' proper use, which the next section names.
The stove on the ghosts: fire fighting fire
Wu Gui owns the most satisfying remedy in the Eight Mansions toolkit: it is the classical seat of the stove. The doctrine — the stove sits on the inauspicious and faces the auspicious — reaches its ideal form here, because a fire affliction is pressed best by literal fire: the burners consume the ghosts daily while the fire-mouth turns toward Tian Yi or another blessing, and the kitchen becomes the house's exorcist. Where the stove cannot reach it, Wu Gui takes the same passive assignments as the other ill sectors — storage, bathroom, the heavy and the ignored — with one addition the texts insist on: nothing precious. The five ghosts' sector is the wrong place for the safe, the jewellery, the documents; what ghosts govern, they may take.
Reading the ghosts without superstition
The five ghosts invite the most superstitious reading of any Ba Zhai energy, and the school itself is drier than its reputation. What the doctrine actually claims is orientation-dependent friction: a household whose active functions sit on this seat will run hotter — more misunderstanding, more suspicion, more loss to carelessness — than the same people differently arranged. The remedy is correspondingly dry: move the daily functions, press the sector, and watch whether the temperature drops. The commentators also preserve Wu Gui's one gift, with the fire star's logic: Lian Zhen governs inspiration's wilder edge, and some lineages allow the sector to creative work that benefits from a little combustion — provided the worker can leave the room, and the quarrels, behind at the door.
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