Kǎn

Kan (坎) is number 1 in the Luo Shu count, the square of nine numbers that the old books use for the palaces. In the later-heaven arrangement it stands at due north, and 說卦傳 calls it water. The imperial almanac 協紀辨方書 gives it three of the twenty-four compass points: 壬, 子 and 癸.

As a birth palace it falls in the East Four (東四位), together with 震, 巽 and 離. The Ming house book 陽宅十書 calls a person's own trigram the 福元, or 福德宮, and says that for a Kan person every reading begins from Kan. Its worked example puts 生氣 at the southeast (巽), 延年 at the south (離), 福德 at Kan itself and 五鬼 at the northeast.

The book finds the palace by counting. In each of three 60-year spans a man's number starts at a fixed value (1, then 4, then 7) and drops one each year, while a woman's starts at 5, 2 or 8 and rises one each year. By that rule a man lands on Kan in 1990, 1999 and 2008, a woman in 1986, 1995 and 2004, and the pattern repeats every ninth year. The calculator reads the birth year at 立春, a convention that no sentence in our sources states.