Kua Number: The Feng Shui Figure Your Birth Year Gives You

The short answer

Your kua number is a digit from 1 to 9 that stands for one of the eight trigrams. It comes from your birth year and your sex at birth, and it fixes a set of compass directions that practitioners read as favorable and another set they read as difficult.

Two people born in the same year get different numbers when their sex differs, so the figure describes a position rather than a personality. Treat it as a label that sorts people into two groups of four.

What a kua number is

The figure is also called a life gua or a ming gua. It assigns each person one of the eight trigrams, and the trigram already carries a direction and an element in the arrangement used for compass work.

Notice what the number does not contain. It holds no month, no day, no hour and no place. That thinness is the reason the calculation can be written on a napkin, and also the reason the result says so little about a person.

Working it out from the birth year

Add the four digits of the birth year. If the total is more than one digit, add those digits again, until one digit remains. That digit is the starting point.

For a man, subtract the digit from 11. For a woman, add 4 to the digit. Both results then need one correction: 10 becomes 1, and 5 has no direction of its own, so a man's 5 becomes 2 and a woman's 5 becomes 8.

Three worked examples, all for 1984. The digits add to 22, and 2 plus 2 gives 4. A man takes 11 minus 4 and lands on 7, the trigram Dui. A woman takes 4 plus 4 and lands on 8, the trigram Gen. A person born in 2000 adds to 2, so a man lands on 9 and a woman on 6.

The eight numbers

Each number maps to one trigram, one compass direction and one element. The table below uses the later heaven arrangement, the same one a practitioner holds a compass against.

Five is absent from the table on purpose. In the older counting, five sits in the centre of the nine-square grid and has no compass direction, which is why each table reassigns it.

East group and West group

The eight numbers split into two sets of four. Numbers 1, 3, 4 and 9 belong to the east group, and the directions they favour cluster on the north and east side of a compass. Numbers 2, 6, 7 and 8 belong to the west group and favour the west and south side.

The split does the sorting work in the practice. When two people share a home, a practitioner compares their groups first, because a direction that suits one group tends to sit in the difficult set for the other.

The four directions read as favorable

Four of the eight directions carry a name, and each name states a different kind of support. The best is sheng qi, then tian yi, then yan nian, then fu wei, which is the direction of the person's own trigram.

Read the fu wei column against the direction table and it lines up: a kua 6 person has fu wei in the northwest, which is the direction of Qian, the trigram that number stands for.

The four read as difficult

The other four directions carry names too, and the tradition orders them from least to most severe: huo hai, liu sha, wu gui, jue ming. The word difficult is doing real work here, since these labels describe friction rather than harm.

Each row uses all eight compass directions once, with no repeats, which is the check that keeps a transcription honest. A table where a direction repeats has a typo.

Which year counts

The calculation takes the lunar year, so a birthday in January or early February belongs to the year before. Someone born on 20 January 1990 counts as 1989 for this figure, even though most documents list 1990.

This is the same boundary problem that runs through Chinese calendar work, and the fix differs by system. A BaZi chart cuts the year at the solar term that marks the start of spring. The kua uses the lunar new year. Two systems, two cuts, and a page that treats them as one will be wrong for any birthday inside that window.

Why kua and BaZi are different calculations

Both use the same eight trigrams, and that shared vocabulary hides a large difference in input. The kua takes a year and a sex. A BaZi chart takes a date, a time and a place, then converts the moment into four pillars with a day master at the centre.

A kua number cannot be expanded into a chart, and a chart does not contain a kua number. Each answers a question the other does not take, and a site that promises to combine them is filling the gap with invention.

What the kua cannot settle

The figure says nothing about health, income, or the outcome of a decision, and the tradition's own texts speak about directions rather than events. A reading that turns four directions into a promise about money has left the method behind.

It also cannot choose a home for you. Practitioners disagree about which rooms matter most, and about whether the figure should be applied to a whole dwelling or to a single bed. Those disagreements are worth knowing before you rearrange furniture.

How to test one claim in a week

Take the direction your number marks as sheng qi and notice where it falls in the room you use most. Write down what the practice would predict if the label carried weight, and what you would expect to see if it carried nothing.

At the end of the week, compare the note with what happened. A label that survives a week of ordinary life without any adjustment on your part is worth keeping. A label that needs a story to fit is worth dropping.

If you want to take this further: your own chart and how the five elements fit together.

FAQ

How do I find my kua number? Add the four digits of your birth year until one digit remains. A man subtracts that digit from 11, a woman adds 4 to it, and the result needs one fix: 10 becomes 1, and 5 becomes 2 for a man or 8 for a woman.

Why is there no kua 5? Five belongs to the centre of the nine-square grid, and the centre has no compass direction. Older tables reassign it, so a man with 5 reads as 2 and a woman with 5 reads as 8.

Do I use my birth year or the Chinese year? The lunar year is the convention, so a birthday before the lunar new year belongs to the previous year. Check the date of that new year for your birth year before you commit to a number.

Can two people with different kua numbers share a home? They can, and most households do. Practitioners handle it by comparing the two groups first, then choosing directions where both people avoid their difficult set, which often means one room per person.

Does a kua number replace a BaZi chart? No. The kua takes a year and a sex and points at directions. A chart takes a full birth record and describes a temperament. Neither converts into the other.