What it is
The Water Formula — 龍門八局, the Dragon Gate Eight Formations — reads the water around a building: where it should arrive, and where it should leave. Its one input is the palace the building SITS in (the direction its back faces). From that palace eight named positions follow, and each says what water arriving from, or leaving toward, that direction is read to do. The occupant’s Kua does not enter it.
Where water should arrive at a house, and where it should leave.
How it works
The sitting palace sets everything. Its Early Heaven seat is the 先天 position (water arriving there is read as supporting the household's people) and its Later Heaven counterpart the 後天 position (supporting wealth); the same two for the facing palace are the Guest (賓) and Visitor (客) positions, where arriving water favours those outside the household's line. The palace 45° beside the facing is 天劫 (Heaven Robbery) — the preferred exit, and the worst place for water to arrive from — and the one on the other side 地刑 (Earth Punishment), which water must not leave through. The facing palace itself is 案劫 (Front Robbery): water should leave through it, never strike in. The palace left over is 輔卦. The water mouth (水口) is the stem and corner mountains of the two exit palaces.
Key components
- Sitting Palace — The Later Heaven palace behind the building. Each of the eight sitting palaces has its own formation — which direction holds each position.
- 先天 and 後天 — The Early Heaven and Later Heaven positions of the sitting palace: where water arriving is read as supporting the household’s people (先天) and its wealth (後天), and must never leave.
- Heaven Robbery and the Front (天劫, 案劫) — The two exits. 案劫 is the palace the building faces; 天劫 lies 45° beside it. Water should leave through them, and water arriving from 天劫 is the formula’s worst case.
- Water Mouth (水口) — Where the formula wants water to drain away: the stem and corner mountains of the 天劫 and 案劫 palaces.
- Earth Punishment (地刑) — The palace on the other side of the facing. Every source forbids water leaving through it; whether water arriving there helps, the sources disagree.
- 曜煞 — Three mountains per formation where a road, a corner or water striking toward the building is read as harmful — one for the sitting palace and one each for its 先天 and 後天 positions.
Your reading
Once you have a KAXANTA account, this section fills with your actual Water Formula values — computed once from your birth data and refreshed as transits shift. Until then, this is the shape of what you'll see.
Every number in your reading traces back to a classical calculation — no AI fabrication, no synthetic guesswork. If something looks wrong, it's almost always birth-data accuracy.
How KAXANTA reads this
KAXANTA reads the Dragon Gate formation from your saved house facing: the eight positions and the direction(s) holding each, what arriving and leaving water does at each direction, the water mouth, the three 曜煞 mountains, and a warning when the sitting bearing lies within one line of a boundary between two palaces (where a small measuring error would change the formation). It needs only the house facing — not your Kua. Adopted 2026-09-28 (ADR-0010); readings made before then, which rated directions from the Kua, are recalculated.
I don't read Water Formula in isolation — I weigh it against the other eight systems based on the question you're asking. Decisions, timing, psychology, and environment each have their own primary authority; Water Formula contributes to the ones where its lineage is strongest.
Common questions
History & lineage
A San Yuan (三元) water method: the sources that print its tables file it as 三元水法.
KAXANTA presents Water Formula faithfully, as its lineage presents itself. We don't sacralise it, we don't reduce it. If it consistently describes you better than generic advice would, use it. If not, lean on the other eight.
References & further reading
Canonical sources that informed this page. Wikipedia entries are starting points for cross-disciplinary context; books are practitioner-grade depth.
- 论龙门八局系水法 (华夏大易学社)Website
- 三元水法龙门八大局 (简书)Website
- Bagua (Eight Trigrams)Wikipedia
- Feng shuiWikipedia