Before any analysis, the Feng Shui expert will have you fill in questionnaires… One dedicated to the house (year of construction, work already done, possible problems of leaks, cracks, etc), and one for each inhabitant of the house. In the latter, the expert asks for the date of birth. This is indeed what will enable the Kua figure to be calculated.
The Kua number or Ming Gua is a number derived from the year of birth (following the Chinese calendar).
Ming means “life”.
Gua means “trigram”.
The Ming Gua is therefore the Ba Gua trigram of an individual’s life. It is expressed as a number.
In Feng Shui, the human being is at the heart of the practice. He is the one who receives the vital breath, the chi. Even when applying the school of form and studying the landscape, the person remains at the centre of the subject: the expert does so with the sole aim of improving the life of the inhabitants of the place, of helping them to solve a problem, of enabling them to be prosperous.
Each person has his or her own energy. It depends on several parameters, one of which is the chi received at birth. It is said in the I Ching, the book of transformations, that everything can be represented by one of the 8 trigrams. Each person can therefore be associated with a trigram, which is their Kua number.
One could say that the Ming Gua is the guardian angel star. It determines the best directions for sleeping and working. It also gives the personal element as each star has its own element.