Feng Shui London and UK Spacessential

What is the personal Gua?

A personal Gua, or Kua, is the name given to one of the eight symbolic trigram used on the Bagua that is associated with your date of birth. Those Guas are split into two groups: the east group and the west group, each made of four Guas.

East group:

• East is Zhen Gua

• Southeast is Xun Gua

• South is Li Gua

• North is Kan Gua

West group:

• Southwest is Kun Gua

• West is Dui Gua

• Northwest is Qian Gua

• Northeast is Gen Gua

The Guas give some indication on your personal affinity with sectors and directions.

The personal Gua can be also be used to determine a first level of compatibility between yourself and a specific house. For example, if you belong to the east group, you have a better compatibility with an east group house rather than with a west group house. If you belong to the West group, you then are more compatible with the West group houses.

The Gua can therefore serve as the first guideline to determine some auspicious sectors and direction for a person to sleep under and to work. However they are not enough.

Is a personal Gua the same as finding your birth Element?

Not really. The Gua are a very superficial level of information, and unfortunately a lot of Feng Shui audits are based entirely on Gua association only. The problem is that a personal Gua does not overwrite a personal chart. On top of Gua it is necessary to use the Bazi, or personal chart, to achieve results.

The Bazi give a much more precise insight into a person, and tell us what you can or cannot take in term of energy, based on your individual reaction with the Five Elements.

Example: Your personal Gua is Dui. Based on the Gua correspondences, North West and Southwest are some of your best sector. Northwest is associated with the Metal Element, Southwest with the Earth Element. However your Bazi shows that you are a weak Earth person. A Metal sector will deplete you slowly but surely, as Earth produces Metal, and so Metal weakens the Earth. Even if NorthWest is your best sector based on Gua only, it is also a Metal sector. It is therefore better to put you in an Earth sector, like Southwest, to strengthen your weak Earth nature, and to avoid Metal. You can therefore see how using the Gua only can lead to real problem in Feng Shui consultations…

So the personal Gua is no use?

The personal Gua is useful, but it should be taken as a very superficial level of interpretation. The personal chart as seen through the Bazi always takes priority over the Gua. Why? It is simple to understand.

Splitting people into East and West group, based on their Gua, is equivalent to split the world population into a male and a female group. You don’t go very far with such an approach.

The 8 Guas, included in those 2 groups, give a more precise indication. However it is still very superficial. It can be compared to defining an ethnic and age group inside the male/female grouping. So with an East and West group, and 8 individual Gua, we can say that you are male or female, and American, Indian, asian, black, latino, Caucasian etc. This is useful information. It gives us a clue of who you are as a human being, on your background, on your culture, and your potential affinities and dislike. Just like the Gua are a summary of attributes. However this is not YOU. We can all agree that reducing the entire human population to two genders and eight ethnics group is not a very subtle approach.

When the Bazi is read and analyzed, this is a different picture. A Bazi is basically the entire foundation of your life: it gives indication about who you are, your destiny, your affinity for a certain environment, a specific work, the potential for a long-lasting union etc. But moreover it defines your personal Chi – and therefore tells exactly what you can and cannot take in term of Chi in your environment. Integrating the Bazi into your Feng Shui audit takes it to a whole new level.

Suddenly this is not about giving you a remedy on the assumption that you are let’s say an Asian female in her thirties. This is about giving you the exact cure for your problem because we know your genetics, body type, illness, intolerances and allergies.

Example: Based on your Gua a superficial type of Feng Shui will put you into your (apparently) best sector (Sheng Chi), in North. However your Bazi shows that you are in fact a weak fire person. Putting a weak fire person into a strong Water sector exposes them to a direct clash. In a matter of months your life will become full of stress, ailments, potential financial losses etc. And you will not understand how it can be while you are sleeping under your “best” sector. You will then probably stop believing in Feng Shui and discard this great opportunity to improve your whole life! The Bazi analysis avoids such problems.

Remember that there is no such thing as one-diet-fit-all. One man’s cure is another man poison, and this is very true when it comes to Feng Shui! So knowing your nature into its finest details is the only way to make sure we do not make mistake and will bring improvement in your life. The same approach is used in Chinese medicine, by the way.

What is a feng shui birth date?

Well I don’t know! This expression does not make sense to me. In Feng Shui you have the following concepts:

• a personal Gua, based on your gender and year of birth

• a Ba Zi, or personal chart, based on your gender and date of birth

• a Chinese date of birth, that means a western one translated into the corresponding Chinese calendar’s date.

All those concepts can be called “Feng Shui birth date” but this expression is not officially coined in the world of professional Feng Shui.