Eight Mansions 八宅
八宅 ba zhai: eight mansions, the personal-direction system.Eight Mansions is its own system, not a branch of the four pillars. It works from one number and answers a different question: which directions suit you.
What it is
Eight Mansions derives a single number, the Kua, from your birth year and the calculation basis. That number puts you in one of two groups, and the groups have opposite sets of favourable directions.
It is worth being clear that this is not Four Pillars. It shares the calendar and the Li Chun year boundary, and nothing else. A reading covers which directions favour you, which do not, and in what severity order, along with what to do when a door or a desk cannot be moved.
Why every home contains all eight
Every building holds all eight directions, so the work is never avoidance. It is assignment: deciding which rooms and which orientations get your favourable directions, and where to compromise when two people in one home have opposite sets.
What Eight Mansions is made of
3 setsThe eight directions 八方
8 entriesThe eight Kua numbers 命卦
8 entriesThe five elements 五行
5 entriesReadings built on Eight Mansions
2 readingsEight Mansions 八宅
Free Kua calculators hand you a number and no manual. Read the page →Eight Mansions for Two 八宅
Two people, one home, and every direction favours exactly one of you. Read the page →Also draws on Eight Mansions: Chart Legend.
Method and sources
Charts are computed with deterministic libraries, corrected for true solar time at the birth longitude, and interpreted against the classical texts listed below.
Read against the classical direction verse and the dwelling essentials:
- 大遊年歌 Da Youniange Song of the Great Wandering Year, the anchor verse, attributed to 八宅明鏡 Bazhai Mingjing
- 陽宅三要 Yangzhai Sanyao The Three Essentials of Dwellings