Compared to the Zhen trigram (Hard Wood), the Xun trigram is referred to as “Soft Wood.” Like a blade of grass, it can bend, compared to the unbendable wood of a hard stick. Xun people can be more flexible in their personalities and the image from the I-Ching is related to the wind or a traveler, and movement.

Xun can be written as “Sun” depending on the dialect from Pin Yin or Wade-Giles and is pronounced like “shoon.” The personal trigram is also popularly referred to in many books as the “ming gua” or “kua number.” Each trigram has a number associated with it and Xun is the number 4. This should not be confused with the cultural prejudice against the number 4, which sounds like the word for “death” in Mandarin. In this context, the 4 Xun trigram has nothing to do with that.

There are a multitude of meanings and associations with the 4 star of Xun. But as a personal trigram, we can narrow down the associations to include best personal directions and their influences, as well as body areas and vulnerabilities.

People born in the following years are the Xun trigram: 1942, 1951, 1960, 1969, 1978, 1987, 1996 and so on, repeating every nine years. For many years, westerners have gotten their personal trigram wrong as well as their Chinese zodiac sign wrong, if they should happen to have been born between January 1st and February 3rd. For Feng Shui purposes and for Ba Zi Four Pillars Astrology, a solar calendar is the reference point and that begins on February 4h or 5th, not on January 1st. Additionally, the years just listed have been published on a wide scale as being the Xun trigram for males only. However, preceding the inception of the Ba Zhai School, there was no gender differentiation. As well, in the Japanese divination art of Nine Star Ki, there is no female “gua” distinct from the male gua.

For Xun people, their best direction for attracting financial luck is the North. This means utilizing the direction in a number of ways, such as head pointing to that direction when sleeping or facing that direction when working or negotiating with people. Using a North entrance would be valuable to a Xun person.

A back-up location/ direction for the Xun trigram person is the direction of South. Not only can this direction be good for prosperity, but the implication is that it can attract helpful friends and benefactors. Trying to be successful on one’s own is more challenging, but with benefactors supporting you, it has to be easier.

Directions must be determined using a compass, both for locating the directions within a house as well as for the personal preferred directions as outlined in Eight Trigram Theory. With a compass, we can identify the local magnetic field, which resonates with information relevant to any authentic Feng Shui evaluation.

For a Xun person, East is a good direction to take advantage of in regards to developing good relationships with others, both inside and outside the home. How people perceive you can make a difference in how successful or not you are in the world, so this particular direction may be more important than even the major prosperity direction of North for the Xun type.

Xun people can find their most comfortable sleep orientation with head to southeast when laying down. Not every house is built on the cardinal directions, so sometimes a southeast wall is available for a headboard wall. If not, the Xun person can also sleep well in the other three “east group” directions of east, north and south.

Along with the Zhen, Kan, and Li people, the Xun person is classified as an East Group person. The uses of this information go well beyond the scope of this description, but the classifications include ideal house type orientations as well as personal compatibility with other trigrams. For example, if Xun is wood, then we can assume that the Kan (Water) people can have a strengthening influence on the Xun person. Water nurtures Wood in Chinese metaphysics as well as literally in nature.

Xun people are susceptible to issues with the low back, hips, legs, knees, thighs or buttocks. Some Xun people demonstrate quite a bit of strength in the lower body, with a natural attraction to martial arts, dancing and other sports.

Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions (R) Since 1992
From the Health & Personal Matters Blog Series