How the Eight Mansions method rates a house direction

At a viewing, Vietnamese and Chinese families often ask which way the house faces and whether it suits someone’s birth year. The question usually comes from Bát trạch (八宅 in Chinese), the Eight Mansions method. Feng shui is a cultural tradition. This guide describes how the method works as the tradition records it, and says nothing about whether a home will be good or bad for you.

The life gua from a birth year

Bát trạch uses nine palaces numbered 1 to 9: Khảm (Kan), Khôn (Kun), Chấn (Zhen), Tốn (Xun), the centre, Càn (Qian), Đoài (Dui), Cấn (Gen) and Ly (Li). Each person belongs to one of them, their life gua (cung mệnh), found from birth year and gender.

The year is the lunar year. For men the palace number goes down by one each year; for women it goes up by one, repeating every nine years. A man born in 1990 is Khảm; a woman born in 1990 is Cấn.

The centre (5) is not a trigram. The tradition turns it into Khôn for men and Cấn for women, so everyone ends up with one of eight gua.

Lunar years and early-year birthdays

The lunar year begins at Tết, the Lunar New Year, which usually falls in late January or in February. If you were born in January or early February, your lunar year may be the previous calendar year. Check the date of Tết in your birth year first.

East and West groups

The eight gua fall into two groups:

• East group: Khảm, Ly, Chấn, Tốn.
• West group: Càn, Khôn, Cấn, Đoài.

In the tradition, the East group is matched with north, south, east and southeast, and the West group with west, northwest, southwest and northeast.

Eight directions, eight stars

For each gua the tradition assigns a star to each of the eight directions. Four stars are favoured: Sheng Qi, Tian Yi, Yan Nian and Fu Wei. Four are not: Jue Ming, Wu Gui, Liu Sha and Huo Hai.

For Khảm, for example: Sheng Qi is southeast, Tian Yi east, Yan Nian south and Fu Wei north; Huo Hai is west, Wu Gui northeast, Liu Sha northwest and Jue Ming southwest. The other seven gua each have their own table.

The star names are labels within the method. This guide does not treat them as promises or warnings.

Reading the result

A Bát trạch result tells you how the tradition rates eight directions for one birth year. It says nothing about health, money or luck. Sources sometimes differ on how they handle the lunar year, so compare them if the result matters to your family.

When you choose a home, the things you can measure are still the price, the loan, the costs and how you will use the place. The decision is yours.