West 西
The Dui 兌 direction, lake and exchange, and the seat Kua 7 is born into. West favours the west four.
What west is
West is the 兌 Dui palace, the lake trigram, seventh of the nine. Lake is the classical image of exchange and of open surface: something that meets what comes to it.
The image belongs to the seat. It does not describe what the direction does for a given person, because in Eight Mansions the compass is read outward from whoever is standing in it. West is the strongest ground in the house for one Kua number and the hardest for another, and the wall is identical in both cases.
Kua 7 is born here, so 伏位 Stability lands in the west for Kua 7 and for no one else.
Who west favours
West is one of the four favourable directions for the west group, Kua 2, 6, 7 and 8, and one of the four rough ones for the east group, Kua 1, 3, 4 and 9. As with every direction, there is no middle case.
It is strongest for Kua 6, carrying 生氣 Success, which classical practice ranks first of the eight and associates with push, growth and visible work. For Kua 2 it is 天醫 Health, the recovery ground. For Kua 8 it is 延年 Relationships, read as the long game and as relations that hold. For Kua 7 it is the own seat.
When west is one of your rough four
For the east group the same wall is graded rather than written off, and the grading is the point.
West is 禍害 Mishaps for Kua 1, mildest of the four, closer to friction than to anything larger. It is 六煞 Setbacks for Kua 4, and 五鬼 Conflict for Kua 9, which classical practice associates with disputes and with work at cross purposes. For Kua 3 it is 絕命 Instability, most heightened of the eight, where momentum tends to disperse rather than build.
Those are readings of ground, not statements about a person, and the ladder from mildest to most heightened is what makes them usable in a house that does not offer a clean choice.
Assignment, not avoidance
Every home contains a west, and the tradition never asks you to do anything about that fact.
What a reading does is assign. Corridors and storage absorb a rough sector at almost no cost; the desk you work at, the bed you sleep in and the chair you habitually sit in are what a favourable sector is for. The scale of the answer is a chair turned or a headboard moved.
Which of the eight west is for you follows from one number, computed from your birth year and the basis your chart is read on, and a reading settles that before it says anything else.
Common questions
NotesIs west a bad direction to sleep facing?
Not by itself. West is one of the four favourable directions for Kua 2, 6, 7 and 8, and one of the four rough ones for Kua 1, 3, 4 and 9. Eight Mansions also reads a bed by where the headboard sits rather than by which way you face, which is a different question from a desk.
What trigram is west?
兌 Dui, the lake trigram, in the seventh of the nine palaces. Kua 7 is born into it, which is why 伏位 Stability lands in the west for Kua 7 alone.
Is the west group worse than the east group?
No. The two groups are exact mirrors of each other: four favourable directions and four rough ones each, with the same eight designations distributed differently. Neither group has better ground, only different ground.
What west 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 west 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