Kua number and your favourable directions

The Kua number is a number from 1 to 9, never 5, calculated from your birth year and gender, that places you in the East or West group and gives you four favourable directions, one each for prosperity, health, relationships and personal growth.

Kua comes from the Eight Mansions (Ba Zhai) school of Chinese feng shui, which maps each number onto a direction of the Lo Shu square. It is a different kind of number from your Moolank or Bhagyank: those describe temperament and direction in life, while Kua describes physical directions in a room.

How is the Kua number calculated?

1. Take the birth year. If the birthday is before 4 February, use the previous year. A birth on 4 February itself counts in the new year.
2. Add the year's digits and reduce to one digit, n.
3. Men: reduce 11 − n. Women: reduce 4 + n.
4. A result of 5 becomes 2 for men and 8 for women.

The calculator shows the year it used as a separate fact, adds a note when the 4 February rule moved you back a year, and prints the working in one line, such as "1989 → 9; 11 − 9 → 2".

Why does the formula use all four digits of the year?

Older books give two rules, one per century, using only the last two digits of the year reduced to one digit (call it r). This site uses all four digits instead, and the result is the same in both centuries.

	Born 1900–1999 (traditional)	Born 2000–2099 (traditional)	This site, both centuries
Men	10 − r	9 − r	11 − n
Women	5 + r	6 + r	4 + n

Here r is the last two digits of the year reduced to one digit, and n is all four digits reduced.

The reason is simple arithmetic. For a 1900s year the first two digits add 10, which reduces to 1, so n is one more than r, and 11 − n equals 10 − r. For a 2000s year the first two digits add 2, so n is two more than r, and 11 − n equals 9 − r. The women's rules line up the same way.

Worked example

Born 14 August 1990: 1 + 9 + 9 + 0 = 19 → 10 → 1, so n = 1.

• Man: 11 − 1 = 10 → 1. East group.
• Woman: 4 + 1 = 5 → 8. West group.

Born 20 January 1990 (before 4 February): use 1989. 1 + 9 + 8 + 9 = 27 → 9, so n = 9. Man: 11 − 9 = 2, West group. The boundary moved him from the East group to the West group. A woman born that day: 4 + 9 = 13 → 4, East group.

A second example: one day either side of the boundary

Born 3 February 2004. The birthday is before 4 February, so the year used is 2003: 2 + 0 + 0 + 3 = 5, so n = 5.

• Man: 11 − 5 = 6. West group: prosperity west, health north-east, relationships south-west, personal growth north-west.
• Woman: 4 + 5 = 9. East group: prosperity east, health south-east, relationships north, personal growth south.

Now take 4 February 2004, one day later. The year used is 2004: 2 + 0 + 0 + 4 = 6, so n = 6.

• Man: 11 − 6 = 5, which becomes 2. Still West group, but now prosperity north-east, health west, relationships north-west, growth south-west.
• Woman: 4 + 6 = 10 → 1. Still East group, with prosperity south-east, health east, relationships south, growth north.

The group stayed the same for both, but every direction changed. That is why the boundary matters even when the group does not move.

The two groups and their directions

East group numbers (1, 3, 4, 9) share the directions east, south-east, south and north. West group numbers (2, 6, 7, 8) share west, north-west, south-west and north-east. Within a group, which direction serves which purpose differs by number.

Two patterns make the table easier to remember:

• The personal growth direction is the number's own place in the Lo Shu square. Drawn the traditional Chinese way, with south at the top, 9 sits in the south, 1 in the north, 3 in the east, 7 in the west, 4 in the south-east, 2 in the south-west, 8 in the north-east and 6 in the north-west. 5 sits in the centre, which is why it has no direction of its own. The Lo Shu grid lesson uses the same square.
• The four aspects have traditional names. Eight Mansions calls them Sheng Qi (prosperity), Tian Yi (health), Yan Nian (relationships) and Fu Wei (personal growth). The tradition also names four less supportive directions for each number, and they are simply the other group's four. This site lists only the favourable ones.

Where do schools disagree?

• When the year begins. This site uses a fixed 4 February, close to Li Chun, the start of spring in the Chinese solar calendar, which falls on 3, 4 or 5 February depending on the year. Some practitioners use the lunar new year, which moves between late January and mid-February, and some simplified calculators ignore the boundary and use 1 January. The choice is a single switch in the site's settings (kua.solarYearBoundary, currently on). If you were born in late January or early February, it is worth knowing which rule a practitioner uses.
• Gender. The tradition has only the two formulas. If neither describes you, the honest answer is that the tradition does not say, and some people read both results.
• Kua and Vastu. Vastu assigns directions by the purpose of a room, the same for everyone. Kua personalises directions for one person. Many Indian practitioners keep Vastu for the layout of the building and use Kua for personal choices inside it. The Vastu lesson on the eight directions covers the Vastu side.

How are the directions used in practice?

The directions are preferences for when you have a choice: which way a desk faces, which way the head points in bed, which way a main door opens. The prosperity direction is usually given to work, the health direction to sleep, the relationships direction to the bedroom door, and the growth direction to study. They are a tradition, not a measurement, and nothing happens if a room cannot be arranged that way.

A few practical points:

• Facing means the direction you look. For a desk, it is the direction your face points while you work, not the wall behind you.
• Use a compass, not a guess. Phone compasses drift near steel, appliances and wiring; take a reading in more than one spot. The Vastu lesson on finding north and the centre explains how.
• Couples in different groups are common. A shared bed can face a direction that suits one person while each uses their own directions for a personal desk or chair. Neither arrangement is a problem.

Common mistakes

• Using the calendar year for a January birth. Anyone born from 1 January to 3 February uses the previous year on this site.
• Treating 4 February as before the boundary. It is the first day of the new solar year.
• Mixing up the century rules. A man born in late 2004 using the 1900s rule gets 10 − 4 = 6. The correct 2000s rule gives 9 − 4 = 5, which becomes 2. The four-digit formula avoids this.
• Stopping at 10. 11 − 1 = 10 must be reduced again, to 1.
• Swapping the substitutions. A raw 5 becomes 2 for men and 8 for women, not the other way round.
• Expecting Kua to match your Moolank. Kua ignores the day and month of birth entirely, so it often differs from your other numbers, and that is normal.

Kua in the Lo Shu grid

When you give a gender in the Lo Shu grid calculator, this site adds your Kua number to the grid as well as your Moolank and Bhagyank, a common Indian practice. A Kua of 2 or 8 can therefore fill a missing 2 or 8 in the grid. The lesson on planes and missing numbers explains what that changes.

Calculate yours

Try the calculator this lesson explains.

Date of birth

Day

Month

Year

For example 14 08 1990 · Remembered on this device only, never sent anywhere.

Gender (the Kua formula needs it)

MaleFemale

Calculate