West · 270° — FengShui.info

In the tradition

Dui is the lake: a broken line resting on two solid ones, an open surface over depth. It is autumn, dusk, the youngest daughter, and its attribute is joy: talk, pleasure, the end of work. Its element is Metal in the gentler of its two phases.

The Western bagua reads this as children and creativity, an extension of the trigram’s association with the youngest child and with play.

In the room

West-facing rooms are cool until afternoon and then take the full low sun until it sets: strong, horizontal, hard to shade. Dining rooms and sitting rooms use it well; home offices with screens do not. Metal’s roundness and whiteness belong here, and a heavy curtain is the most useful object in the room.

Fig. 02 · Sun path · 45°N The sky a West-facing wall can see, and the sun’s track across it in June, at the equinoxes and in December.

Jun: 7.6 h
Mar · Sep: 5.9 h
Dec: 4.2 h

A geometric model, not a forecast: it assumes a clear sky and a flat horizon at 45° north, and it says nothing about qi. It is here because orientation is the one part of the tradition that can be drawn exactly.

See West on the Bagua explorer

Sources for this page · the full bibliography

01 Stephen Skinner, The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui (1982). Routledge & Kegan Paul. An early, serious English introduction to the classical system.

02 Eva Wong, Feng-shui: The Ancient Wisdom of Harmonious Living for Modern Times (1996). Shambhala. A compass-school practitioner’s account of the Form and Compass methods, clear about which is which.

03 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 4, part 1: Physics (1962). Cambridge University Press. The history of the magnetic compass in China, including its use by geomancers before navigators.

04 Mohamed Boubekri and colleagues, Impact of windows and daylight exposure on overall health and sleep quality of office workers: a case-control pilot study (2014). Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 10(6), 603–611. Daylight at work and sleep at night; a small study, honestly labelled a pilot.

05 Joshua J. Gooley and colleagues, Exposure to room light before bedtime suppresses melatonin onset and shortens melatonin duration in humans (2011). Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 96(3), E463–E472. Ordinary room light before bed, not only screens, delays melatonin.

The sun-path drawing and the hours of light are computed from a geometric model at 45° north (see the methodology page), not taken from any source; the directions' trigrams, elements and readings are the tradition's, as the manuals above give them.