The eight directions
Eight Mansions gives every person one number, and that number turns the compass into eight assignments: four directions that work for you and four that do not. The compass belongs to the person, never to the building, which is why the same wall reads two opposite ways.
The eight wandering stars
Computed · 遊星Each direction carries one of these eight for you, decided by your Kua number. Four are favourable and four are rough, and the tradition ranks them rather than sorting them into two piles. The classical name sits beside each, because the literal translations are dramatic and the applied reading is what a chart actually supports.
growth, push, visibility: the strongest ground
Classical name: Vital Energyrest and recovery
Classical name: Heavenly Doctorharmony, the long game
Classical name: Extended Yearsstability, quiet progress: the Kua's own seat
Classical name: Hidden Positionsmall friction: mildest of the four
Classical name: Mishap & Harmdrift and setbacks
Classical name: Six Killingsfriction-prone ground, disputes
Classical name: Five Ghostsinstability: most heightened; momentum disperses
Classical name: Severed FateThe two life groups
Computed · Exact complementsEvery Kua number belongs to one of two groups, and the two sets of four directions do not overlap anywhere. That is why a household with one person in each group has no shared favourable ground, and why the work becomes assigning rooms rather than finding a compromise wall.
The eight
In compass orderNorth 北
坎 Kan (Water)North-east 東北
艮 Gen (Mountain)East 東
震 Zhen (Thunder)South-east 東南
巽 Xun (Wind)South 南
離 Li (Fire)South-west 西南
坤 Kun (Earth)West 西
兌 Dui (Lake)North-west 西北
乾 Qian (Heaven)The compass belongs to the person
This is the thing most direction writing gets backwards. Eight Mansions as practised here reads the compass out from the individual, not from the building. There is no such thing as a good north-facing flat, only a flat whose north wall happens to suit the person standing at it.
A separate school reads the dwelling's own trigram instead. That is a different tradition with a different question, and mixing the two produces contradictions rather than a fuller picture.
Assignment, not avoidance
Every home contains all eight directions. You cannot subtract four of them, and no honest reading asks you to try. The four that do not favour you are ranked by severity precisely because most homes force a compromise somewhere, and it is better to make the cheap one on purpose.
What the tradition actually offers is assignment: which room is used for what, which wall a desk faces, which one a headboard sits against. The scale of an answer is a chair turned or a bed rotated. It is never a renovation, and it is never a directive about how to live.
Which four directions are yours
Find your day master free →Your Kua number comes from your birth year and the basis your chart is read on. A reading works it out, names all eight in severity order, and says which room each one should be doing.
Still working out which system answers your question? How Eight Mansions works
Method and sources
Every designation on these pages is computed from the same function the readings use, so the vocabulary here and the vocabulary in a delivered document are the same. The Kua by sector matrix was verified cell by cell against an independent numeric table before it shipped. What each designation tends to mean follows the classical verse 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