North 北
The Kan 坎 direction, and the seat Kua 1 is born into. North favours the east four and is rough for the west four.
What north is
North is the 坎 Kan palace, the water trigram, first of the nine. In Eight Mansions the compass belongs to the person rather than to the building, so north is not a quality a room has. It is a relationship between a wall and whoever is standing in front of it.
Every Kua number is born into the direction of its own trigram, and north is Kua 1’s. That is why 伏位 Stability, the star of a Kua’s own seat, always lands here for Kua 1 and nowhere else.
Who north favours
North is one of the four favourable directions for the east group, which is Kua 1, 3, 4 and 9. For the west group, Kua 2, 6, 7 and 8, it is one of the four rough ones. The two groups are exact complements: there is no direction that is mildly good for everyone.
Within the four it favours, north is not the same thing to each. It carries 生氣 Success for Kua 4, the strongest of the eight and the one classical practice associates with push and visibility. For Kua 3 it is 天醫 Health, the quieter recovery ground. For Kua 9 it is 延年 Relationships, the long game. For Kua 1 it is the own seat, 伏位 Stability.
When north is one of your rough four
For the west group the same wall reads the other way, and the tradition grades the four by severity rather than lumping them together.
North is 禍害 Mishaps for Kua 7, the mildest of the rough four and closer to friction than to anything larger. It is 六煞 Setbacks for Kua 6, and 五鬼 Conflict for Kua 8, which classical practice associates with disputes and things going at cross purposes. For Kua 2 it is 絕命 Instability, the most heightened of the eight, where momentum tends to disperse rather than build.
Those are tendencies attached to ground, not forecasts about a person. The severity order matters because it tells you which compromises cost least when a home does not offer a clean choice.
Assignment, not avoidance
Every home contains all eight directions. You cannot remove north from a house, and the tradition never asks you to.
What a reading does instead is assign: which room gets used for what, which wall a desk faces in a season when you need push, which one a headboard sits against when you need rest. The scale is a chair turned and a bed moved, not a renovation.
Which of the eight north is for you depends on one number, and that number comes from your birth year and the calculation basis your chart is read on. That is the question a reading answers, and it takes about a minute to work out.
Common questions
NotesIs north a good direction in feng shui?
Not on its own, and that is the whole point of Eight Mansions. North is one of the four favourable directions for Kua 1, 3, 4 and 9, and one of the four rough ones for Kua 2, 6, 7 and 8. Any source that tells you north is lucky without asking your Kua number has skipped the step that does the work.
What trigram is north?
坎 Kan, the water trigram, which sits in the first of the nine palaces. That is why Kua 1 finds its own seat here: each Kua number is born into the direction of its own trigram, and 伏位 Stability always lands there.
My partner and I have different Kua numbers. Who wins?
Neither, and the tradition does not ask you to pick. Where two people are in different groups, every direction favours exactly one of them, so the work is assignment rather than a contest: which rooms each of you uses for what. A couples reading compares both compasses and says so directly.
What north is for each Kua
Computed · 8 Kua numbersOne number decides the whole column. Find yours on the left and read across: the four favourable readings run strongest first, and the four rough ones run mildest first, which is the order the tradition ranks them in.
Not sure of your Kua number? It comes from your birth year and the calculation basis your chart is read on. How Eight Mansions works.
What north is in your own home
Find your day master free →This page describes the direction. A reading works out your Kua number, names all eight directions in severity order, and says which room each one should be doing rather than leaving you a table to apply.
Still working out which system answers your question? All eight directions
Method and sources
The trigram, the Kua whose seat this is, and what this direction is for each of the eight Kua numbers are computed from the same function the readings use, never typed. 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