Glossary · 183 terms

Defined once, with its origin.

Romanised in pinyin, with the Chinese given for reference. Where a term belongs to one school rather than to the whole tradition, the definition says so.

Cosmology

The ideas the system is built from

Bagua 八卦, the eight trigrams: Eight three-line figures, each a combination of broken and solid lines, arranged in a ring or a 3 × 3 grid. Each is assigned a direction, an element, a season and a set of qualities. The bagua map lays this grid over a plan. Read more →fengshui.info/bagua/ Used in 10 articles Choosing a home: reading the site Colour by element Drawing your plan Mirrors The Lo Shu square The luopan and the twenty-four mountains and 4 more
Controlling cycle 相剋 xiāngkè: The restraining sequence of the Five Elements: Wood breaks Earth, Earth dams Water, Water quenches Fire, Fire melts Metal, Metal cuts Wood. Used to correct an excess. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-five-elements/ Used in 3 articles Colour by element The Five Elements The kitchen
Dead qi 死氣 sǐqì; also 濁氣 zhuóqì, turbid qi: Qi that has stopped moving: the tradition’s word for the air of a closed room, a windowless bathroom, a cupboard under the stairs, and the reason its manuals open the windows in the morning and dislike a room with an opening on one side only. The opposite of living qi, and measurable now in parts per million. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/air/ Used in 1 article The air in the house
Dui 兌, lake ☱: The trigram of joy: the lake, the youngest daughter, the west, Metal. Evening, autumn and completion; the sector associated with the youngest daughter and, in the Black Sect map, with children and creativity. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 1 article Understanding the Bagua
Earlier Heaven arrangement 先天八卦 xiāntiān bāguà: The primordial ordering of the trigrams attributed to Fu Xi, with Qian (heaven) in the south and Kun (earth) in the north. Used in some compass calculations; not the arrangement of the everyday bagua map. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 1 article Understanding the Bagua
Earthly branches 地支 dìzhī: The cycle of twelve, Zi to Hai, each carrying an animal, an element, a double hour of the day and a month of the year; the Rat is midnight and the eleventh month, the Tiger the first month at the start of spring. The animals of the zodiac are the branches’ animals. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-pillars/ Used in 2 articles The Four Pillars The twelve animals
Five Elements 五行 wǔxíng, the Five Phases: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water: five phases of change that generate and control one another in fixed cycles. Applied to rooms as a vocabulary of shape, colour, material and direction. Read more →fengshui.info/elements/ Used in 19 articles Art, images and objects Colour by element Feng shui for better sleep Fire in the house Lighting Numbers, floors and doors and 13 more
Gen 艮, mountain ☶: The trigram of stillness: mountain, the youngest son, the north-east, Earth. Rest and the end of a cycle; the sector associated with the youngest son and, in the Black Sect map, with knowledge. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 1 article Understanding the Bagua
Generating cycle 相生 xiāngshēng: The productive sequence of the Five Elements: Wood feeds Fire, Fire makes Earth, Earth yields Metal, Metal condenses Water, Water nourishes Wood. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-five-elements/ Used in 2 articles Colour by element The Five Elements
Heavenly stems 天干 tiāngān: The cycle of ten, Jia to Gui, a yang and a yin of each of the Five Elements in the generating order. Paired with the twelve branches it makes the sixty-pair cycle by which the tradition names years, months, days and hours, and which the Shang were already using to name days. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-pillars/ Used in 3 articles The Four Pillars The student’s desk The twelve animals
Hetu 河圖, the river chart: The companion figure to the Lo Shu: the numbers one to ten arranged in pairs on the four sides and the centre, said to have come out of the Yellow River on the back of a dragon-horse and to have given Fu Xi the trigrams. The tradition reads the Hetu for the pairing of the elements and the Lo Shu for the plan. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-lo-shu-square/ Used in 1 article The Lo Shu square
Kan 坎, water ☵: The trigram of the abyss: water, the middle son, the north, Water. Depth, danger and winter; the sector associated with the middle son and, in the Black Sect map, with career. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 1 article Understanding the Bagua
Kun 坤, earth ☷: The trigram of three broken lines: earth, the mother, the south-west, Earth. The most yin of the eight; the sector associated with the mother and, in the Black Sect map, with relationships. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 1 article Understanding the Bagua
Kunlun 崑崙 Kūnlún: The mountain range of the far west that the Form School’s geography makes the ancestor of every mountain in China, from which the three trunk dragons run east to the sea and every lesser vein descends. A cosmological origin as much as a place: the axis of the earth in the old texts, and the root of the dragon tree in the geomantic ones. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-dragon-veins/ Used in 1 article The dragon veins
Later Heaven arrangement 後天八卦 hòutiān bāguà: The ordering of the eight trigrams used in feng shui, attributed to King Wen, with Li (fire) in the south and Kan (water) in the north. Describes the world in motion, as opposed to the Earlier Heaven arrangement, which describes it in its ideal state. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 4 articles Siting elsewhere The Lo Shu square The luopan and the twenty-four mountains Understanding the Bagua
Li 離, fire ☲: The trigram of clinging brightness: fire, the middle daughter, the south, Fire. Noon, summer and recognition; the sector associated with the middle daughter and, in the Black Sect map, with fame. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 1 article Understanding the Bagua
Li chun 立春, “the start of spring”: The solar term around 4 February that begins the feng shui year. Compass methods count a January birth as belonging to the previous year; the lunar New Year is a different boundary. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/flying-stars/ Used in 1 article Flying Stars: how a chart is built
Lo Shu square 洛書: The 3 × 3 magic square whose rows, columns and diagonals each sum to fifteen. Its numbers are mapped onto the eight directions and the centre, and underlie both the bagua grid and the Flying Star method. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-lo-shu-square/ Used in 6 articles Drawing your plan Eight Mansions Flying Stars: how a chart is built Numbers, floors and doors The Lo Shu square Understanding the Bagua
Period 運 yùn: A span of twenty years in the San Yuan cycle, numbered one to nine. The number of the period sits at the centre of every Flying Star chart drawn in it. Period 9 began at li chun 2024. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/flying-stars/ Used in 3 articles A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish Choosing a day
Qi 氣, also ch’i: Breath, vapour, vital energy: the animating principle that classical Chinese thought saw moving through land, weather, bodies and buildings. Feng shui reads a site by how qi gathers, moves or drains from it. Not a measurable physical quantity. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/qi/ Used in 19 articles Clutter and order Evidence and feng shui Feng shui in a day Front door feng shui Hallways and stairs Levels, ceilings and floors and 13 more
Qian 乾, heaven ☰: The trigram of three unbroken lines: heaven, the father, the north-west, Metal. The most yang of the eight; the sector the tradition associates with the head of the household and with helpful people in the Black Sect map. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 2 articles Home office feng shui Understanding the Bagua
River Chart 河圖 hétú: The diagram of the ten numbers in five pairs set to the directions: one and six at the north for Water, two and seven at the south for Fire, three and eight at the east for Wood, four and nine at the west for Metal, five and ten at the centre for Earth; odd numbers drawn as white dots, even as black. Printed beside the Lo Shu at the front of the Song commentaries on the Changes; the source of the Five Elements’ numbers. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/numbers/ Used in 1 article Numbers, floors and doors
Stems and branches 天干地支 tiāngān dìzhī: Two cycles, of ten and twelve, whose combination gives the sixty-year cycle of the Chinese calendar. Twenty of the twenty-four mountains take their names from them. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-pillars/ Used in 1 article The Four Pillars
Sui Po 歲破 suìpò, the year-breaker: The sector of the compass opposite the Tai Sui, where the year’s clash falls; the second of the almanac’s yearly afflictions, and like the first a rule against building work in the sector rather than against furniture. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-twelve-animals/ Used in 1 article The twelve animals
Tai Sui 太歲 tàisuì, the Grand Duke: The sector of the compass associated with the year’s earthly branch, which the annual almanacs say should not be faced or disturbed by building work. With the Three Killings and the annual Five Yellow, one of the three yearly afflictions of Compass practice. A school teaching, renewed each year. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-twelve-animals/ Used in 6 articles Building and renovating Choosing a day Moving house On the road The Four Pillars The twelve animals
Taiji 太極 tàijí, “the great ultimate”: The undivided source from which yin and yang separate, and, on a plan, the centre of the house: the ninth sector of the bagua, which the tradition wants open, still and free of stairs, stoves and bathrooms. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/yin-and-yang/ Used in 2 articles The living room Yin and yang in a room
The channels 經絡 jīngluò: The channels along which the physicians read qi as flowing through the body, with the points, the xue, set on them; the medicine’s counterpart of the geomancer’s dragon veins, and the older of the two. The Book of Burial borrowed the vocabulary of flow, gathering and scattering from them. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-body-and-the-house/ Used in 2 articles Recovering at home The body and the house
The Five Yellow 五黃 wǔhuáng: The star five of the Flying Star method, read as the most harmful of the nine, and the palace it lands in when the year’s ruling star is flown from the centre: west in 2024, north-east in 2025, south in 2026. The Compass schools’ addition to the almanac’s three yearly afflictions. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-lo-shu-square/ Used in 1 article The twelve animals
The Four Animals 四象 sìxiàng, “four images”; also 四神 sìshén, “four spirits”: The Azure Dragon of the east, the Vermilion Bird of the south, the White Tiger of the west and the Black Tortoise of the north: the four quarters of the Han sky, each a season and an element, brought down by the Book of Burial to name the hills round a site and, by the practitioners, the walls and furniture round a seat. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-animals/ Used in 5 articles A house, read from start to finish Feng shui in the city Planting by direction The classroom The four animals
The god of wealth 財神 cáishén: The god of the shop and the eating house, whose shelf stood on a side wall facing into the room, with the till beneath or beside it and never facing the door; the merchant’s counterpart of the household’s kitchen god, and the first thing Hong Kong’s restaurateurs asked a geomancer about. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-restaurant/ Used in 2 articles The restaurant and the café The shop
The six clashes 六沖 liùchōng: The six pairs of branches opposite each other on the ring: Rat and Horse, Ox and Goat, Tiger and Monkey, Rabbit and Rooster, Dragon and Dog, Snake and Pig. Read as strain between two people’s year animals, between a person and a day, and between a year and the sector opposite its own. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-twelve-animals/ Used in 1 article The twelve animals
The solar terms 節氣 jiéqì: The twenty-four divisions of the sun’s year, fifteen degrees of its path each, from the winter solstice round: the starts of the four seasons, the solstices and equinoxes, and sixteen named for the weather between. The fixed frame of the Chinese calendar, printed in every almanac, against which the lunar festivals drift. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-house-through-the-year/ Used in 1 article The house through the year
The Three Killings 三煞 sānshà: The quarter of the compass opposite the year’s trine: south in Monkey, Rat and Dragon years, north in Tiger, Horse and Dog years, west in Pig, Rabbit and Goat years, east in Snake, Rooster and Ox years. The third yearly affliction of the almanac; no digging or building on that side of the house that year. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-twelve-animals/ Used in 1 article The twelve animals
The twelve animals 生肖 shēngxiào: The twelve animals attached to the twelve earthly branches, Rat to Pig: names for a cycle that is an hour, a month, a year and a direction at once. A mnemonic first recorded complete in the Han; the year animal is the branch of the year pillar, one character of the Four Pillars. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-twelve-animals/ Used in 1 article The twelve animals
Trigram 卦 guà: One of the eight figures of the bagua: three stacked lines, solid (yang) or broken (yin), read from the bottom up. Qian ☰ is three solid lines; Kun ☷ three broken. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 3 articles Eight Mansions The Lo Shu square Understanding the Bagua
Vastu purusha mandala वास्तुपुरुषमण्डल: The square grid of the vastu treatises, most often nine by nine, across which the cosmic man lies face down with his head to the north-east and every cell is a deity’s seat: Brahma’s at the open centre, fire’s in the south-east, water’s in the north-east, the heavy earth’s in the south-west. The Indian counterpart of the bagua laid over a plan, turned forty-five degrees from it on fire and water. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/siting-elsewhere/ Used in 1 article Siting elsewhere
Xun 巽, wind ☴: The trigram of penetration: wind and wood, the eldest daughter, the south-east, Wood. The sector associated with the eldest daughter and, in the Black Sect map, with wealth, which is the source of the “wealth corner”. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 1 article Understanding the Bagua
Yang Gong 楊公, Master Yang, Yang Yunsong 楊筠松: The Form School’s founder of the late Tang as the trade’s patron: the practitioners of the south burned incense to him, the village of Sanliao in Jiangxi where his lineage settled kept his temple and his tomb, and a school that cannot name its master names him. The nearest thing feng shui has to a god of its own, and he was a man with a compass. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/feng-shui-and-religion/ Used in 1 article Feng shui and religion
Yin and yang 陰陽: The complementary pair at the base of the system: shade and light, still and moving, receptive and active. A room is read for its balance of the two; a bedroom leans yin, a kitchen yang. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/yin-and-yang/ Used in 30 articles A bed for two Bedroom feng shui Colour by element Feng shui for better sleep Feng shui in a day Levels, ceilings and floors and 24 more
Zao Jun, the Kitchen God 灶君 Zàojūn, also 灶神 Zàoshén: The god of the stove, whose paper image hangs over it and who reports on the household to heaven each year on the twenty-third of the twelfth lunar month, sent off with sticky sweets to sweeten his account. The reason the tradition keeps the stove clean, lit and respected, and the origin of most of its stove rules. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-household-gods/ Used in 8 articles Fire in the house Moving house The house through the year The household gods The kitchen The restaurant and the café and 2 more
Zhen 震, thunder ☳: The trigram of arousal: thunder, the eldest son, the east, Wood. Morning, growth and beginnings; the sector the tradition gives to the eldest son and to the family in the Black Sect map. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/understanding-the-bagua/ Used in 2 articles The children’s room Understanding the Bagua

Concepts

Terms used in reading a site or a room

Annual stars 流年飛星 liúnián fēixīng: A second Flying Star grid, flown from the number of the year, laid over a house’s chart and changed every li chun. The source of the yearly warnings about which sector to leave undisturbed and where to put metal or water. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/flying-stars/ Used in 1 article Flying Stars: how a chart is built
Armchair configuration: The ideal Form School site: a high landform behind (Black Tortoise), lower ridges to left (Azure Dragon) and right (White Tiger), open ground and water in front (Red Bird). Translated indoors, it becomes the command position. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-command-position/ Used in 14 articles Art, images and objects Bed placement Bedroom feng shui Choosing a home: reading the site Desk placement Levels, ceilings and floors and 8 more
Arowana 龍魚 lóngyú, the dragon fish: The long silver or red fish of the Hong Kong and Singapore office tank, kept for its resemblance to the dragon and its price, and set where the room’s movement belongs, near the entrance and in view of the seats. A practice of the trade, not of the manuals, which had goldfish. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/animals-in-the-house/ Used in 1 article Animals in the house
Azure Dragon 青龍 qīnglóng: The animal of the east, spring and Wood. In the Form school’s plan, the ridge on the left of a site facing south, which should be long, coiling and a little higher than the tiger opposite; in a room, the sitter’s or sleeper’s left, which carries the taller piece. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-animals/ Used in 3 articles Animals in the house Planting by direction The four animals
Beam over the head 橫樑壓頂 héngliáng yādǐng: An exposed beam, bulkhead or dropped soffit directly over a bed, a desk or a seat. Read as weight pressing on the person beneath; the remedies, in order, are to move the furniture, turn it along the beam, or hide the beam. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/beams-and-corners/ Used in 2 articles Levels, ceilings and floors Sha, the catalogue of faults
Bed mother 床母 chuángmǔ: The goddess of the bed who guards infants and children, honoured at the child’s bed in Fujian and Taiwan on the child’s birthdays and on the festivals; the tradition’s tenderest deity, and the origin of the rule that a child’s bed is a place and not a piece of furniture. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-household-gods/ Used in 2 articles The baby’s room The household gods
Black Tortoise 玄武 xuánwǔ, “the Dark Warrior”: The animal of the north, winter and Water, a tortoise with a snake wound round it. The hill behind a site, which the Book of Burial wants “hanging its head”, sloping gently to the lair; in a room, the solid wall behind a bed or a chair. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-animals/ Used in 2 articles Animals in the house The four animals
Canopy bed 架子床 jiàzichuáng: The bed of the Ming house: a platform with a post at each corner, a frame above and railings below, hung with curtains drawn at night, so that the sleeper lay in a room within the room. The site’s bedroom rules, the head to a wall, the enclosure, nothing over the sleeper, are the canopy bed described from outside. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-furniture/ Used in 1 article The furniture of the tradition
Cave dwelling 窯洞 yáodòng; the sunken courtyard, 地坑院 dìkēngyuàn: The houses cut into the loess of Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan: vaulted rooms dug into a cliff face, or into the four walls of a courtyard sunk eight or nine metres into flat ground and entered by a ramp. Earth behind every room and the sun in front of the principal ones, which is the tradition’s sentence dug rather than built. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-houses/ Used in 1 article The houses the manuals were written for
Command position: The place in a room from which you can see the door without being in line with it, with a solid wall behind. Applied to the bed, the desk and the stove. A Form School idea with a plausible basis in the psychology of prospect and refuge. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/bed-placement/ Used in 37 articles A bed for two A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish Beams and corners Bed placement Bedroom feng shui and 31 more
Courtyard house 四合院 sìhéyuàn, “four-sided enclosure”: The walled house of Beijing and the north, with its buildings on the four sides of one or more courts: the gate in the south-east corner behind a screen, the principal hall along the north facing south, the wings east and west, the servants’ and kitchen rooms along the south. The plan the yang-house manuals assume when they speak of a house. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-houses/ Used in 4 articles Siting elsewhere The houses the manuals were written for The shared flat The shophouse
Day master 日主 rìzhǔ, also 日元 rìyuán: The stem of the day pillar, which the Four Pillars read as standing for the person; the other seven characters are read as its relations, what feeds it, what it produces, what controls it. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-pillars/ Used in 1 article The Four Pillars
Directorate of Astronomy 欽天監 Qīntiānjiān: The Ming and Qing court’s bureau of astronomy and the calendar, which also kept the geomancers who sited the imperial tombs and chose the days for the court’s works. The state’s feng shui, staffed, salaried and filed with the calendar rather than with any church. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/feng-shui-and-religion/ Used in 1 article Feng shui and religion
Doing the month 坐月子 zuò yuèzi, “sitting the month”: The thirty days after a birth in which the mother keeps to a warm, closed room, does not go out, wash her hair or meet the wind, and is fed warming foods; the tradition’s postnatal ward, ended by the full-month feast. Pillsbury described it from Taiwan and Hong Kong; it is still widely kept. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-babys-room/ Used in 1 article The baby’s room
Door facing door 對門煞 duìmén shà: Two front doors opposite each other across a corridor or a lane, so that each household opens onto the other’s comings and goings. The manuals read it as a quarrel between the houses; the plainer reading is two halls with no privacy from each other, and the remedy is a screen inside the door or a step to one side. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-neighbours/ Used in 4 articles Choosing a flat Doors inside the house The neighbours The shared flat
Door gods 門神 ménshén: The pair of guardians pasted on the two leaves of a front door at New Year, in most of China the Tang generals Qin Shubao and Yuchi Gong, who stood guard over the emperor’s sleep; in the older form, Shentu and Yulei of the Han. The threshold’s watchmen, and the reason the tradition’s door is dressed and not bare. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-household-gods/ Used in 5 articles Animals in the house The house for a wedding The house in mourning The household gods The remedies
Door nails 門釘 méndīng: The rows of gilt bosses on a great door, whose count the Qing statutes fixed by rank: nine rows of nine on the emperor’s gates, nine by seven for a prince, seven by seven for a duke, five by five for the lords below, and none on a commoner’s door. The one place the tradition’s numbers were written on the outside of a house. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/numbers/ Used in 2 articles Numbers, floors and doors Selling a house
Double happiness 囍 shuāngxǐ, the character for joy written twice: The character cut in red paper and pasted on the gate, the door of the bridal chamber and the window for a wedding, which tells the lane what the white cloth tells it for a death. The red affairs’ sign, as the door gods are the New Year’s. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-house-for-a-wedding/ Used in 1 article The house for a wedding
Dragon and tiger sides 青龍白虎 qīnglóng báihǔ: The left and right of a site as it looks out. The dragon side, the left, is wanted a little higher and more planted than the tiger side, the right. On a north-up plan of a south-facing house the dragon side is on the right of the page. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-animals/ Used in 1 article The outside
Dragon gate 龍門 lóngmén, as Hong Kong uses it: A gap left through a tall building on a hillside so that, in the city’s reading, the dragon of the hill behind can reach the water in front; several storeys high, at the level the reading gives the path. A Hong Kong form of the last forty years, and a view corridor and a wind path under another name. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-city/ Used in 1 article Feng shui in the city
Dragon veins 龍脈 lóngmài: The ridges along which the Form School reads qi as travelling from high mountains down to a site. A site at the end of a living dragon vein, where the ridge settles and water gathers, is the classical ideal. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-dragon-veins/ Used in 7 articles Choosing a home: reading the site Feng shui in the city The body and the house The dragon veins The Five Elements The water dragon and 1 more
Earth building 土樓 tǔlóu: The fortified communal houses of the Hakka and Minnan people of Fujian, rings or squares of rammed earth three or four storeys high with the rooms facing an inner court and the ancestral hall at its centre, entered by a single gate. A whole lineage in one house, sited by the Form School like a village. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-houses/ Used in 1 article The houses the manuals were written for
East and West groups 東四命西四命: The two families into which Eight Mansions sorts people and houses by kua number: East group (kua 1, 3, 4, 9) and West group (2, 6, 7, 8). The good directions of one group are the bad directions of the other, which is the source of the couple problem. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/eight-mansions/ Used in 4 articles A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish Eight Mansions The house for a wedding
Eight Immortals table 八仙桌 bāxiānzhuō: The square table for eight, two stools to a side, that stood before the altar table in the hall and served the family’s meals for four centuries; named for the eight immortals of the Daoist legend. The round table the site prefers for a dining room is its later, larger cousin. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-furniture/ Used in 1 article The furniture of the tradition
Entering the house 入宅 rùzhái; Cantonese 入伙 yap fo, “entering the fire”: The almanac’s heading for the day of a move, one of its standard items with its own good and bad days. The rite it names begins with the stove: the rice pot is carried in full and the fire lit before anything else, which is why the Cantonese name the whole day after it. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/moving-house/ Used in 1 article Moving house
Facing and sitting 向 xiàng, 坐 zuò: A building’s facing direction is the direction it opens toward (usually the main door or the most active elevation); the sitting direction is its opposite, the side it rests on. Compass methods begin by fixing these two. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/finding-your-facing-direction/ Used in 9 articles A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish Choosing a home: reading the site Finding your facing direction Flying Stars: how a chart is built Front door feng shui and 3 more
Facing mountain 朝山 cháoshān, “the mountain paying court”: In the Form school’s section, the mountain beyond the table hill, far enough to rise into view again over it: the last thing the site looks at, and the one the manuals want handsome rather than near. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-animals/ Used in 1 article The four animals
Feng shui 風水 fēngshuǐ, “wind–water”: The Chinese practice of siting and arranging buildings, rooms and graves in relation to landform, orientation and the flow of qi. The name comes from the Zangshu: qi scatters on the wind and is held by water. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/what-is-feng-shui/ Used in 3 articles A history of feng shui Feng shui beyond China What is feng shui?
Four animals 四象 sìxiàng: The four guardians of an ideal site in the Zangshu: the Azure Dragon on the left, the White Tiger on the right, the Vermilion Bird in front and the Dark Warrior, the tortoise, behind. Read as landform they are a hill behind, lower flanks and open ground with water before; read at the scale of a room they are the command position. Read more →fengshui.info/rooms/outside/ Used in 14 articles A bed for two Animals in the house Bed placement Feng shui beyond China Home office feng shui Levels, ceilings and floors and 8 more
Four waters return to the hall 四水歸堂 sì shuǐ guī táng: The saying of the sky-well house: the rain from the four roofs falls inward into the court and is caught before the hall, so that water, which the tradition reads as wealth, is kept in the house and not shed to the lane. The yang-house rule of water before the hall, built into a section. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-houses/ Used in 1 article The houses the manuals were written for
Geomancy: The word nineteenth-century Western writers used for feng shui, and a misnomer: Western geomancy is divination by marks made in sand. Scholarship still uses it, with the caveat, for the Chinese practice of siting. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/siting-elsewhere/ Used in 3 articles Feng shui and religion Feng shui beyond China Siting elsewhere
Half-moon pond 半月池 bànyuè chí; also 風水塘 fēngshuǐ táng: The semicircular pond dug before an ancestral hall or a large house in the south, its straight side to the building, so that the hall has water in its bright hall. The remedy for a site without water in front, and also the village’s fire pond and fishpond. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-remedies/ Used in 1 article The remedies
Heavenly doctor 天醫 tiānyī: One of the four favourable directions of Eight Mansions, the one the school gives to health: the direction toward which the sick person’s bed was turned and the stove’s mouth set when someone in the house was ill. Read from the house’s kua or the person’s. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/recovering-at-home/ Used in 1 article Recovering at home
Horseshoe chair 圈椅 quānyǐ: The armchair whose back and arms are one curved rail, the seat of honour in the Ming hall and the piece the collectors prize most; a wall behind, arms either side and the room in front, which is the command position made in wood. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-furniture/ Used in 1 article The furniture of the tradition
Inauspicious house 凶宅 xiōngzhái; Cantonese hung zaak: A house in which someone has died by violence or by their own hand, or whose households have failed one after another: the manuals would not have a family enter one without rites, and a buyer in Hong Kong still pays about a fifth less for one. The tradition’s idea that a house keeps the fortune of its last household, priced by the market. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/selling-a-house/ Used in 2 articles Selling a house The house in mourning
Jade belt water 玉帶水 yùdài shuǐ; also 環抱水, embracing water: A river or a road that bends round a site with its belly toward the house, holding it in the curve as a jade belt held an official’s robe; the form the Water Dragon Classic prizes most before a door, and the inner bank of a meander, where the river deposits and the ground grows. Its opposite is the reverse bow. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-water-dragon/ Used in 1 article The water dragon
Jie jing 借景 jièjǐng, “borrowed scenery”: The Ming garden manual Yuan Ye’s rule for the view: cut a window or a gate to frame what lies beyond the wall, a distant hill, a neighbour’s tree, the moon, a reflection, the season, so that the garden takes it in as its own, and leave out what is not wanted. The tradition’s reading of what a window looks at, in the gardener’s language. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-garden/ Used in 5 articles Planting by direction The balcony The garden The outside Windows
Kanyu 堪輿, “canopy and chariot”: The older name for the discipline, meaning roughly “heaven and earth”: the observation of sky and ground together. Feng shui as a term displaced it after the fourth century. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/what-is-feng-shui/ Used in 6 articles A history of feng shui Feng shui and religion Feng shui beyond China The texts The yin house What is feng shui?
Leak window 漏窗 lòuchuāng: The lattice-filled opening in a garden wall through which a view leaks from one court into the next without a passage: a glimpse rather than a prospect, and the garden’s way of making a small enclosure feel like part of a larger one. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-garden/ Used in 1 article The garden
Ming tang 明堂, “bright hall”: The open, level space in front of a building or a door where qi can collect before entering. Indoors: the clear area just inside the entrance. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-animals/ Used in 45 articles Animals in the house Bed placement Building and renovating Choosing a flat Choosing a home: reading the site Clutter and order and 39 more
Money toad 蟾蜍 chánchú, the three-legged toad: A figure from Chinese folk religion, a three-legged toad with a coin in its mouth, sold by the trade to sit inside the front door facing in. It appears in no classical text; the site treats it as an ornament, one school’s or none, and draws it ghosted. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/art-and-objects/ Used in 1 article Art, images and objects
Moon gate 月門 yuèmén, 月洞門 yuèdòngmén: The circular opening cut through a garden wall, which frames what lies beyond it as a picture and turns a wall into a view. The garden’s instrument of borrowed scenery, and the site’s image of what a window is for. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-garden/ Used in 1 article The garden
Mountain star 山星 shānxīng: In a Flying Star chart, the number written on the left of each palace, flown from the sitting palace. Read as governing people: health, relationships, the standing of the household. Wants something solid on its side of the house when it is timely. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/flying-stars/ Used in 2 articles A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish
Mouth of qi 氣口 qìkǒu: The front door, as the opening through which qi enters a house. The reason the entrance is read first, kept clear and lit, and not aligned with a back door, a window or a staircase. Read more →fengshui.info/rooms/entrance/ Used in 9 articles Clutter and order Doors inside the house Front door feng shui Hallways and stairs The entrance The restaurant and the café and 3 more
Nine palaces 九宮 jiǔgōng: The three-by-three grid of the Lo Shu square laid over a plan: eight sectors around a centre. The frame on which the bagua is placed and through which the Flying Stars move. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-lo-shu-square/ Used in 1 article The Lo Shu square
Pagoda of letters 文峰塔 wénfēng tǎ; also 文昌塔 Wénchāng tǎ: A pagoda raised by a county or a lineage at the water mouth of its valley, from the Ming onward, to close the gap where the river left the view and hold the district’s qi, and dedicated to Wenchang, the god of literature, because the qi held was the qi of the examinations. A feng shui remedy at the scale of a district, in a Buddhist form. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-remedies/ Used in 2 articles The remedies The student’s desk
Peach charms 桃符 táofú: The boards of peach wood hung either side of a door at New Year, from the Han onward, painted with the names or the figures of the door guardians, because peach wood was thought to turn ghosts. The couplets on red paper that replaced them in the Song are still hung in the same two places, and the peach tree is welcome by a gate for the same reason. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/planting-by-direction/ Used in 1 article Planting by direction
Pointed-corner sha 尖角煞 jiānjiǎo shà: The protruding corner of a chimney breast, a piece of furniture or, outside, another building, read as an edge with a line along which sha travels. The English “poison arrow” is a modern rendering of this and the wall blade. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/beams-and-corners/ Used in 2 articles Sha, the catalogue of faults The neighbours
Principal hall 正房 zhèngfáng, “the upright rooms”: The building along the north side of a courtyard house, facing south into the sun: the hall with the ancestral altar in its central bay and the rooms of the senior generation either side, the warmest, brightest and quietest in the compound and the furthest from the gate. The plan’s statement of who came first. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-house-for-old-age/ Used in 2 articles The house for old age The houses the manuals were written for
Release-life pond 放生池 fàngshēng chí: The pond before the gate of a Buddhist monastery, into which the devout release fish and turtles bought to be freed. A rite of the Buddhist precept against killing, dug where the Form School wants water before a building; the monastery’s bright hall and its merit in one pool. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/feng-shui-and-religion/ Used in 1 article Feng shui and religion
Reverse bow 反弓煞 fǎngōng shà: A road or a watercourse that curves past a house with its back to it, so that the outer edge of the curve is drawn across the front like a blade. The opposite of the embracing curve the Form School wants in front of a site. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/sha/ Used in 3 articles Sha, the catalogue of faults The water dragon Water features
Road at the door 路沖 lùchōng: A road running straight at a house, as at the head of a T-junction. The clearest exterior sha in the manuals, read as qi charging the door; the everyday reading is headlights and a car that fails to turn. Screened with a hedge or a wall. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/choosing-a-home/ Used in 5 articles Choosing a flat Quiet Sha, the catalogue of faults The neighbours The water dragon
Screen 屏風 píngfēng: The folding screen of six or eight leaves, or the single standing panel, the tradition’s movable wall: it divided a room, stopped a line of sight from the door to the bed, and turned a draught. The remedy the manuals give for most faults of alignment, and the one a studio still uses. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-furniture/ Used in 2 articles Doors inside the house The furniture of the tradition
Screen hill 案山 ànshān, “table mountain”: In the Form School’s plan, a low hill in front of a site, beyond the open ground and the water: a table or screen that closes the view without blocking it. Huế’s citadel was sited to face one, the hill of Ngự Bình; at the scale of a garden it is the hedge across the front. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/beyond-china/ Used in 2 articles The four animals The yin house
Setting out 出行 chūxíng: The almanac’s heading for the day of a journey, one of its standard items with its own good and bad days; the direction of travel is checked against the year’s Tai Sui and the day’s spirits. The tradition’s one rule for travel, which the site pairs with the traveller’s bed and the light that resets the clock. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/on-the-road/ Used in 1 article On the road
Settling the bed 安床 ānchuáng: The almanac’s heading for the day a bed is installed or moved, kept separately from the day of the move itself; the bed is set against its wall and slept in that night. The practice behind the site’s rule that the bed is the first thing placed in a new home. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/moving-house/ Used in 2 articles Moving house The house for a wedding
Sha qi 煞氣, also “poison arrows”: Harmful or cutting qi: the effect attributed to a sharp corner, a long straight corridor or a road aimed at a door. A useful way to name the discomfort of being in the line of something. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/sha/ Used in 48 articles A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish Art, images and objects Beams and corners Bed placement Bedroom feng shui and 42 more
Sheng qi 生氣: Vital, generative qi: the quality of a place that feels alive and well-tended. The opposite of stagnation. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/qi/ Used in 8 articles Clutter and order Plants Qi, and what the word does Quiet The air in the house The body and the house and 2 more
Sky-cut sha 天斬煞 tiānzhǎn shà: The narrow slit between two tall buildings when it faces a house or a window. The exterior sha the modern city invented, read as a channel of wind and a line of pressure aimed at whoever lives opposite it. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/sha/ Used in 4 articles Choosing a flat Feng shui in the city Sha, the catalogue of faults The neighbours
Sky-well 天井 tiānjǐng: The small open court at the centre of the tall houses of Huizhou and the lower Yangtze, into which the roofs of all four sides drain. The house’s light, air and water in one square of sky; the southern form of the courtyard. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-houses/ Used in 2 articles The houses the manuals were written for The shophouse
Spirit screen 影壁 yǐngbì, also 照壁 zhàobì: The free-standing wall set just inside, or sometimes outside, the gate of a Chinese courtyard house. It stops the straight line from the gate into the court, gives the person entering a turn and the house a face, and is the classical form of every remedy the manuals give for a door that sees straight through. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-remedies/ Used in 7 articles Front door feng shui Small apartments and studios The entrance The house through the year The houses the manuals were written for The neighbours and 1 more
Suit the site 因地制宜 yīn dì zhì yí: The first rule of the Yuan Ye, the Ming manual of garden making: read what the ground already does, its slope, its water and its views, and make the garden from that rather than against it. The garden maker’s version of the Form School’s reading of a site, stated without a compass. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-garden/ Used in 1 article The garden
Tang, the hall 堂 táng: The main room of the courtyard house, on the north side of the court and open to it through lattice doors on the south, with the altar table against its back wall, the wall of honour, and the seats along its sides. The ancestor of the living room, and of every rule the tradition gives for a room in which people sit together. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-houses/ Used in 13 articles Fire in the house Sofa placement The classroom The furniture of the tradition The guest room The house for a wedding and 7 more
The academy 書院 shūyuàn: The private academy of the Song to the Qing: a compound on an axis facing south, a pool before the gate, the students’ rooms along the courts, the lecture hall across the axis with the master’s seat on its north wall, the shrine behind it and the library at the back on the highest ground. The courtyard house with a school in it. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-classroom/ Used in 1 article The classroom
The altar 神台 shéntái, the god shelf; 神龕 shénkān, the altar cabinet: The shelf or cabinet on the wall of honour that carries the household’s gods on its own left and the ancestors’ tablet on its right, with a burner before each and red lamps kept lit. The practitioners’ rules for it, a solid wall behind, the door in view, nothing overhead, no bathroom near, are the command position given to the gods. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-household-gods/ Used in 3 articles Fire in the house The house in mourning The household gods
The ancestor mountain 祖山 zǔshān: The tall, often jagged peak far behind a site from which the Form School traces the whole branch of the vein: the origin the practitioner walks back to, behind the parent hill and the hills between. A dragon is judged by its descent from the ancestor, in turns, with passes and side ridges, to the lair. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-dragon-veins/ Used in 1 article The dragon veins
The big mixed courtyard 大雜院 dàzáyuàn: A courtyard house divided among several households, as most of Beijing’s were in the twentieth century: a home in every wing, a stove at every door, lean-tos across the court and the gate the one thing shared. Read by its households house by house, and the tradition’s nearest thing to a shared flat. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-shared-flat/ Used in 1 article The shared flat
The bridal chamber 洞房 dòngfáng, the cave room: The room made for a new couple: the new bed installed on its almanac day against the solid wall, the double happiness on the door, the red candles on the table, the mirror turned from the bed. The bedroom of the manuals made once for two people, and the room the wedding night is named for. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-house-for-a-wedding/ Used in 1 article The house for a wedding
The choosing test 抓周 zhuāzhōu, “grabbing at the year”: At the first birthday the child is set before a tray of objects, a brush, a coin, a seal, a needle, a book, and what it reaches for is read as its life. A game the novels made famous and the tradition kept as the year’s last rite for a new person. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-babys-room/ Used in 1 article The baby’s room
The earth lord 地主 dìzhǔ, in full 地主財神, the earth lord and god of wealth: The god of the ground a house stands on, kept by Cantonese households in a small red shrine at floor level just inside the front door, facing out; the domestic form of the earth god of the locality, whose shrine stands at the village gate or the street corner. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-household-gods/ Used in 1 article The household gods
The eight directions of Eight Mansions 八宅 bāzhái: Each person and each house has four favourable directions, sheng qi (generating breath), tian yi (heavenly doctor), yan nian (longevity) and fu wei (stability), and four unfavourable, huo hai (mishap), wu gui (five ghosts), liu sha (six killings) and jue ming (severed fate). Which is which depends on the kua number. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/eight-mansions/ Used in 1 article Eight Mansions
The false mountain 假山 jiǎshān, the rockery: The artificial mountain of the Chinese garden, piled from lake rocks or earth, with its peaks, caves and paths: the garden’s stand-in for the hill behind a site, set where the plan wants a mountain and read by the same eye that reads a ridge. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-garden/ Used in 1 article The garden
The fetus spirit 胎神 tāishén: The spirit the almanac places in a different part of the house each day of the sixty-day cycle, the door, the stove, the bed, the mill, the window, and whose place must not be hammered, drilled or moved while a woman of the house is expecting. The calendar’s way of saying that a pregnant household does not renovate. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-babys-room/ Used in 1 article The baby’s room
The fish, and surplus 魚 yú, fish; 餘 yú, surplus; 年年有餘 nián nián yǒu yú: The pun the tradition built its fish on: the word for fish and the word for surplus sound alike, so that a fish in a bowl, on a New Year print or on the table says “may there be a surplus every year”. The goldfish of the courtyard and the tank of the Hong Kong office are the pun kept alive. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/animals-in-the-house/ Used in 1 article Animals in the house
The five-foot way 五脚基 wǔjiǎojī, Hokkien goh kaki: The covered arcade under the upper storey of a row of shophouses, five feet deep, which Raffles’s plan for Singapore required in 1822 and the Straits cities copied: a public path along the whole street, and the shared entrance hall of every shop on it. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-shophouse/ Used in 1 article The shophouse
The Four Pillars 八字 bāzì, “eight characters”; 四柱 sìzhù: The stem-and-branch pairs of the year, month, day and hour of a birth, eight characters in four columns, read as a chart of the person by the Ziping method of the Song. Chinese astrology proper; not feng shui, but the reading practitioners most often attach to a house, since it names the elements a person is read as lacking. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-pillars/ Used in 1 article The Four Pillars
The four treasures of the study 文房四寶 wénfáng sìbǎo: The brush, the ink stick, the inkstone and the paper: the scholar’s equipment, ranked and collected, given to a boy beginning school and buried with the man who used them. The studio’s kit, and the sign on a desk that it belonged to someone who wrote. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-students-desk/ Used in 1 article The student’s desk
The full month 滿月 mǎnyuè: The thirtieth day after a birth, when the confinement ends, the child’s head is shaved, red eggs are sent to the relations and the child is shown and named; the first of the first year’s feasts, before the hundred days and the first birthday’s choosing test. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-babys-room/ Used in 1 article The baby’s room
The heated bed 炕 kàng: The brick platform of the northern house, heated by the kitchen’s flue running beneath it to a chimney, on which the household sat, ate and slept through the winter. The reason the tradition’s kitchen adjoined the elders’ room in the north, and its one piece of furniture that was also a building. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-furniture/ Used in 1 article The furniture of the tradition
The heaven official 天官 tiānguān; 天官賜福, “the heaven official bestows blessings”: The first of the three officials of the Daoist pantheon, whose small shrine or red tablet hangs on the post outside a Cantonese front door, facing the street, so that the house is blessed from the sky as it is guarded at the threshold and grounded at the floor. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-household-gods/ Used in 1 article The household gods
The lair 穴 xué, “cave”, “acupuncture point”: The exact spot on a site where qi is read as gathering, and where a grave or a house should be placed. The word is the same one acupuncture uses for a point on the body. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-dragon-veins/ Used in 6 articles Drawing your plan The body and the house The dragon veins The four animals The garden The yin house
The literary star 文昌貴人 wénchāng guìrén: The Four Pillars’ table that gives each of the ten year stems a branch as its star of literature, and so a direction: a person born in a Jia year has it in the south-east, in a Xin year in the north. The Compass schools read it as the person’s own Wenchang position, against the house’s; the site treats both as a preference between good walls. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-students-desk/ Used in 1 article The student’s desk
The master 先生 xiānsheng, “the one born before”; 風水先生 fēngshuǐ xiānsheng: The practitioner’s title in Chinese, the same word as for a teacher or a doctor: the geomancer who is called to a site, walks it, sets the compass and writes the reading. In the villages Bruun studied, a part-time specialist paid in a red packet and kept by reputation; in the cities, a profession with fees. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/hiring-a-practitioner/ Used in 1 article Hiring a practitioner
The mourning hall 靈堂 língtáng, the soul hall: The principal hall of the house set for a death: the coffin on the axis with its head to the interior, the soul seat before it with the portrait, the incense and the white candles, the mourners by rank on either side, the gate hung with white. The hall the elders faced south from, turned for a week to face the dead. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-house-in-mourning/ Used in 1 article The house in mourning
The nine star peaks 九星 jiǔxīng: The nine shapes of hill named in the Han Long Jing after the stars of the Dipper and its two attendants, Tanlang, Jumen, Lucun, Wenqu, Lianzhen, Wuqu, Pojun, Zuofu and Youbi, each with an element from its outline and a reading as lucky or not. The Form School’s vocabulary for a skyline; the same names do other work on the luopan and in Flying Stars. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-dragon-veins/ Used in 1 article The dragon veins
The numerical arts 術數 shùshù: The category under which the imperial bibliographies filed feng shui, with astrology, day-selection, physiognomy and the Yijing arts: techniques of calculation, not teachings of a church. The Siku Quanshu of 1782 shelves the Book of Burial and the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of the Dwelling here, among the philosophers’ miscellany and not among the Daoist or Buddhist texts. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/feng-shui-and-religion/ Used in 1 article Feng shui and religion
The parent hill 父母山 fùmǔ shān: The last rise behind the lair, the hill that shelters the site directly and from which the vein makes its final descent; the tortoise of the four animals seen as a link in the chain from the ancestor mountain. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-dragon-veins/ Used in 1 article The dragon veins
The pass 過峽 guòxiá: The saddle or narrow neck where a dragon vein dips between two heights before rising again toward a lair. The Form School reads the pass as the proof that a vein is alive, since the qi is seen to gather and cross it, and judges a dragon by how many passes it has made and how cleanly. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-dragon-veins/ Used in 1 article The dragon veins
The red packet 紅包 hóngbāo; Cantonese 利是 lai see: The envelope of money in which a practitioner was traditionally paid, as a gift rather than a fee, and which is still the form the payment takes for a house reading in much of the Chinese world; the amount is not haggled over and is given after the reading, not before. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/hiring-a-practitioner/ Used in 2 articles Hiring a practitioner Selling a house
The science of the sand ‘ilm al-raml, geomantia: The Arabic divination by marks made in sand, sixteen figures of dots read in a chart, which reached Europe in Latin in the twelfth century as geomantia and is what the word geomancy meant for seven hundred years before the missionaries applied it to feng shui. A divination by chance, with no site in it. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/siting-elsewhere/ Used in 1 article Siting elsewhere
The seven sevens 七七 qīqī, forty-nine days: The seven rites held every seventh day for forty-nine days after a death, a Buddhist count the households of China kept whatever else they believed, with the hundredth day and the first anniversary after them. The calendar of the mourning hall. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-house-in-mourning/ Used in 1 article The house in mourning
The shophouse 店屋 diànwū: The house of the southern Chinese coast and the Straits cities: a lot a few metres wide and many deep, shop at the street, family behind and above, party walls both sides, an air well through the middle for light and air. The courtyard house turned end-on; read by its axis, since it has no sides. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-shophouse/ Used in 1 article The shophouse
The stone that dares 泰山石敢當 Tàishān shí gǎndāng: A stone slab cut with the words “the stone of Mount Tai dares to resist”, set where a road or a lane ends at a house, at a bridgehead or a bend, to take the road’s rush in the house’s place. The tradition’s remedy for the road-rush, found on the lanes of every southern province, and the one remedy that is an inscription. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-remedies/ Used in 1 article The remedies
The twelve day officers 建除 jiànchú: The cycle of twelve officers, establish, remove, full, level, settle, hold, break, danger, complete, receive, open and close, one to each day in turn, by which the almanac says what a day is fit for. Settle, complete and open are the days for moving in, opening and raising a roof; break, danger and close are not. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/choosing-a-day/ Used in 6 articles Choosing a day Moving house On the road Recovering at home The house for a wedding The house in mourning
The white affairs 白事 báishì, against 紅事 hóngshì, the red affairs: A death and its rites, named for their colour as a wedding and a birth are named for theirs: white cloth, white lanterns, white paper over the door gods and the red couplets taken down. The household’s year turns white for the mourning and red again after it. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-house-in-mourning/ Used in 2 articles The house for a wedding The house in mourning
The woman of good fortune 好命婆 hǎomìngpó: The married woman with a living husband, children and parents who makes up the bridal bed on its almanac day and rolls a small boy on it: the household’s own luck, chosen from among its relatives, put to work on the one piece of furniture a wedding buys. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-house-for-a-wedding/ Used in 1 article The house for a wedding
Through house 穿堂煞 chuāntáng shà: A front door in line with a back door or a window on the far wall, so that the house can be seen straight through. The plan fault the manuals cite most: qi entering and leaving in one movement, and a draught in plainer words. Broken with a screen, a table, a plant or a curtain. Read more →fengshui.info/rooms/entrance/ Used in 15 articles A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish Building and renovating Choosing a flat Doors inside the house Feng shui in a day and 9 more
Trunk dragons 幹龍 gànlóng; the three great trunks, 三大幹龍: The three great mountain veins the Song and Ming geomancers traced from Kunlun to the eastern sea: the northern above the Yellow River, the central between the Yellow River and the Yangtze, the southern below the Yangtze. Every branch dragon leaves a trunk, and every site lies at the end of a branch. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-dragon-veins/ Used in 1 article The dragon veins
Useful god 用神 yòngshén: The element a Four Pillars reading names as the one the chart most needs for balance. It is the hinge between astrology and the house: the colours, directions and materials a practitioner recommends for a person are usually the useful god’s. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-pillars/ Used in 1 article The Four Pillars
Vastu shastra वास्तु शास्त्र, the science of dwelling: India’s tradition of siting and building, set out in Sanskrit treatises of the first millennium such as the Manasara and the Mayamata, with a grid, a set of directions, a fixed corner for fire and water and a consultant at the door. The nearest thing to feng shui outside East Asia, and a different map. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/siting-elsewhere/ Used in 1 article Siting elsewhere
Vermilion Bird 朱雀 zhūquè: The animal of the south, summer and Fire. The open ground in front of a site, the bright hall with the water beyond it, which the Book of Burial wants “soaring and dancing”; in a room, the open floor before a seat and the view it gives of the door. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-animals/ Used in 1 article The four animals
Void line 空亡 kōngwáng: A facing that falls on the boundary between two of the twenty-four mountains, within a degree or two of the line. The Compass schools read such a house as unstable or unreadable, and a careful reading reports it as a void line rather than rounding it to one side. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/finding-your-facing-direction/ Used in 1 article A house, read from start to finish
Wall blade 壁刀 bìdāo: The vertical edge of a projecting wall or column aimed at where a person lies or sits. One of the three interior sha of the manuals, softened with a plant, a curtain or a rounded edge, or avoided by moving the seat out of its line. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/beams-and-corners/ Used in 1 article Sha, the catalogue of faults
Water mouth 水口 shuǐkǒu: The point at which the water of a site leaves its view. The Form School wants it narrow, guarded or hidden, so that the qi the water holds is not seen to drain away; the San He school reads it on the compass. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-water-dragon/ Used in 8 articles Sha, the catalogue of faults The dragon veins The garden The outside The remedies The water dragon and 2 more
Water star 向星 xiàngxīng, “facing star”: In a Flying Star chart, the number written on the right of each palace, flown from the facing palace. Read as governing wealth and activity. Wants openness, movement or water on its side of the house when it is timely. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/flying-stars/ Used in 2 articles A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish
Wenchang position 文昌位 wénchāng wèi: The sector of a house or room that Compass practice associates with study and scholarship, named for the god of literature, and the place some practitioners put a desk. A school preference; the command position comes first. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-students-desk/ Used in 2 articles The classroom The student’s desk
White Tiger 白虎 báihǔ: The animal of the west, autumn and Metal. The ridge on the right of a site facing south, which the Book of Burial wants crouching, shorter and lower than the dragon; a tiger higher than its dragon is the fault the manuals name most, the tiger that “raises its head”. In a room, the right of a seat or a bed. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-four-animals/ Used in 2 articles Planting by direction The four animals
Wing rooms 廂房 xiāngfáng: The buildings along the east and west sides of a courtyard, facing each other across it: the sons’ families, the east wing for the eldest, each a step down in light and standing from the principal hall. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/the-house-for-old-age/ Used in 2 articles The house for old age The houses the manuals were written for
Yang house 陽宅 yángzhái: A dwelling for the living, as opposed to a yin house (陰宅), a grave. The earliest feng shui texts are about the second; everything on this site is about the first. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/what-is-feng-shui/ Used in 8 articles A history of feng shui Home office feng shui Rented homes The bathroom The shophouse The yin house and 2 more
Yin house 陰宅 yīnzhái: A grave, as the dwelling of the dead. The earliest feng shui texts are about yin houses; the reading of hills and water they set out was applied to the houses of the living, yang zhai, by later writers. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-yin-house/ Used in 4 articles Feng shui and religion The house in mourning The yin house What is feng shui?

Schools and methods

Lineages, each with its own procedure

BTB / Black Sect Black Sect Tantric Buddhist feng shui: A modern school founded by Thomas Lin Yun in the United States in the 1980s. It orients the bagua to the front door rather than to the compass and assigns nine “life areas” to the grid. Widely taught in the West; not classical. Read more →fengshui.info/methodology/ Used in 14 articles A history of feng shui Art, images and objects Beams and corners Feng shui and religion Feng shui beyond China Front door feng shui and 8 more
Compass School 理氣派 lǐqì pài: The family of methods that use measured orientation and the luopan: Eight Mansions, Flying Stars and others. Precise, calculative and, in its time-based branches, dependent on when a building was completed. Read more →fengshui.info/methodology/ Used in 9 articles A history of feng shui Eight Mansions Finding your facing direction Flying Stars: how a chart is built The luopan and the twenty-four mountains The schools of feng shui and 3 more
Cures 化解 huàjiě: The Black Sect’s word for its remedies: mirrors, crystals, flutes, wind chimes, lights, colours and objects placed to correct a fault the plan cannot. Classical practice moves the furniture; the cures are that school’s, and the site labels them so. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-schools/ Used in 4 articles Art, images and objects Questions people ask Quiet The remedies
Double stars at the sitting 雙星到坐 shuāngxīng dàozuò: A Flying Star chart in which the period’s ruling star falls as both mountain star and water star in the sitting palace, at the back of the house. The school reads it as strong for people and weak for wealth, and asks for water behind the house; the mirror of double stars at the facing, which the flat reading shows. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/a-house-read/ Used in 1 article A house, read from start to finish
Eight Mansions 八宅 bāzhái: A Compass School method that assigns each person a “kua” number from birth year and sex, and each house a type from its sitting direction, yielding four favourable and four unfavourable directions for each. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/eight-mansions/ Used in 13 articles A bed for two Bed placement Bedroom feng shui Desk placement Eight Mansions Evidence and feng shui and 7 more
Flying Stars 玄空飛星 xuánkōng fēixīng: A time-based Compass School method: nine “stars” (the Lo Shu numbers) are plotted onto a plan according to the building’s facing direction and the twenty-year period in which it was completed. Complex, and outside the scope of this site. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/flying-stars/ Used in 10 articles A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish Choosing a day Evidence and feng shui Finding your facing direction Flying Stars: how a chart is built and 4 more
Form School 形勢派 xíngshì pài, also Luan Tou: The oldest approach: reading landform, water, approach and shelter by eye. The armchair configuration and the command position belong to it. Works without a compass. Read more →fengshui.info/methodology/ Used in 13 articles A history of feng shui Beams and corners Building and renovating Choosing a home: reading the site Feng shui and religion Feng shui beyond China and 7 more
Kasō 家相, house physiognomy, the Japanese practice: The Japanese reading of houses by plan and direction, the part of the tradition that survived in Japan after the siting of the capitals. It shares the eight directions and the elements with the Chinese schools and adds rules of its own, of which the demon gate is the best known. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/beyond-china/ Used in 1 article Feng shui beyond China
Kimon 鬼門, the demon gate: In Japanese kasō, the north-east, the direction from which harm is said to enter a house, where the entrance, the kitchen and the toilet should not be; its opposite, the south-west, is the rear demon gate. A rule of the Japanese practice that the Chinese schools do not stress. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/beyond-china/ Used in 2 articles Feng shui beyond China The bathroom
Kua number 命卦 mìng guà, the natal trigram: In Eight Mansions, a number from one to nine derived from year of birth and sex, mapped to a trigram and to the East or West group of directions. Five has no trigram and is reassigned. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/eight-mansions/ Used in 10 articles A bed for two A flat, read from start to finish A house, read from start to finish Eight Mansions Finding your facing direction Hiring a practitioner and 4 more
Lin Yun 林雲, 1932–2010: The teacher who brought the Black Sect Tantric Buddhist school to the United States in the 1980s and, through Sarah Rossbach’s books, into English. The door-aligned bagua, the life areas and the cures are his school’s. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-schools/ Used in 1 article Feng shui beyond China
Phong thủy 風水, the Vietnamese practice: The Vietnamese reading of the same two characters. Its best-known monument is the citadel of Huế, begun in 1804 with a screen hill before it and the Perfume River in front, on the Form School’s plan for a seat of government. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/beyond-china/ Used in 1 article Feng shui beyond China
Pungsu 풍수, 風水, the Korean practice: The Korean reading of feng shui, traditionally founded by the monk Doseon in the ninth century and closest of the neighbouring practices to the Chinese Form School. It sited Seoul in 1394: mountain behind, hills at the flanks, the Han river in front. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/beyond-china/ Used in 1 article Feng shui beyond China
San He school 三合 sānhé, “three harmonies”: One of the two great Compass lineages, reading a site by the twenty-four mountains, the dragon veins and the water mouth, with a luopan whose rings are built for the purpose. Older than San Yuan in its main texts, and concerned with landform as much as with number. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-schools/ Used in 4 articles Finding your facing direction The luopan and the twenty-four mountains The schools of feng shui The texts
San Yuan school 三元 sānyuán, “three cycles”: The Compass lineage that reads time as well as direction: a cycle of one hundred and eighty years in three yuan of sixty and nine periods of twenty. Flying Stars is its best-known method. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-schools/ Used in 4 articles Choosing a day The luopan and the twenty-four mountains The schools of feng shui The texts
Xuan Kong 玄空 xuánkōng, “the mysterious void”: The name of the Flying Star method in full, xuan kong fei xing, and of the San Yuan tradition that teaches it. Its charts are built from the Lo Shu, the period and the facing. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/flying-stars/ Used in 1 article Flying Stars: how a chart is built

Instruments

What practitioners measure with

Bagua mirror 八卦鏡 bāguà jìng: A small round or octagonal mirror framed by the eight trigrams, hung over a door or window to face outward at a road, a ridge or a neighbouring corner. An exterior deflector in the tradition; not, in the older practice, an indoor object. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/mirrors/ Used in 4 articles Sha, the catalogue of faults The mirror facing the bed The neighbours The remedies
Ding Lan ruler 丁蘭尺 Dīnglán chǐ: The second scale on the carpenter’s tape, used for the things of the gods and the dead: 38.8 centimetres in ten segments, six auspicious (offspring, thriving, justice, office, rising, wealth) and four not (harm, bitterness, death, loss), by which an altar shelf, an offering table, a tablet or a grave is sized. Named for a filial son of the Han; the Lu Ban scale beside it is for the living and their doors. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-household-gods/ Used in 1 article The household gods
Heaven pool 天池 tiānchí: The small well at the centre of a luopan in which the needle sits. The dial is turned until the needle lies along the red thread, and the reading is taken from the rings under the thread. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-luopan/ Used in 1 article The luopan and the twenty-four mountains
Lu Ban ruler 魯班尺 Lǔbān chǐ, also 門公尺 méngōng chǐ: The carpenter’s measure, named after the patron of the trade: 42.9 centimetres divided into eight segments, four auspicious and four not, repeating along the tape, by which the clear openings of doors and the sizes of furniture were set. Tape measures sold in Hong Kong and Taiwan still carry it beside the centimetres. Read more →fengshui.info/guides/front-door/ Used in 5 articles Beams and corners Building and renovating Doors inside the house Front door feng shui The household gods
Luopan 羅盤: The feng shui compass: a magnetic needle set in a rotating plate ringed with concentric scales of directions, trigrams, stems, branches and stars. The 24 “mountains” (15° sectors) are its basic division. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-luopan/ Used in 12 articles A flat, read from start to finish A history of feng shui A house, read from start to finish Drawing your plan Finding your facing direction Flying Stars: how a chart is built and 6 more
Twenty-four mountains 二十四山: The division of the compass into 24 sectors of 15°, three per cardinal and intercardinal direction. The tick marks on the FengShui.info dial. Read more →fengshui.info/mountains/ Used in 4 articles Finding your facing direction Flying Stars: how a chart is built The luopan and the twenty-four mountains Understanding the Bagua

Texts

Sources the tradition cites

Bazhai Mingjing 八宅明鏡, the Bright Mirror of the Eight Mansions: A Qing text of the eighteenth century and the source of the Eight Mansions method as now taught: the kua number, the East and West groups and the eight directions for each person and house. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/eight-mansions/ Used in 1 article Eight Mansions
Dili Wujue 地理五訣, the Five Secrets of Geography: A manual published by Zhao Jiufeng in 1786 that made the San He school’s use of the luopan, the dragon veins and the water mouth standard. The compass practice most nineteenth-century Western observers described. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-texts/ Used in 1 article The yin house
Guo Pu 郭璞, 276–324: The Jin-dynasty scholar and poet to whom the Zangshu is traditionally attributed. The attribution is recorded much later than his lifetime and is doubted by scholars; the site calls the text “attributed to Guo Pu” and no more. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-texts/ Used in 1 article The texts
Han Long Jing 撼龍經, the Shaking Dragon Classic: A verse treatise on reading mountains as dragons, their veins and their lairs, attributed to Yang Yunsong of the late Tang and paired with the Yi Long Jing. The Form School’s founding landform manual. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-texts/ Used in 3 articles The dragon veins The texts The yin house
Huangdi Zhaijing 黃帝宅經, the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of the Dwelling: A text on the siting of houses for the living, of Tang date or later despite its name, and one of the works Paton translates in Five Classics of Fengshui. The earliest sustained treatment of yang zhai. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-texts/ Used in 1 article The texts
Shen Shi Xuankong Xue 沈氏玄空學, Master Shen’s Study of the Mysterious Void: The Flying Star treatise compiled from the notes of Shen Zhureng and published by his son in 1927. The text that made Xuan Kong the dominant compass method of the twentieth century. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/flying-stars/ Used in 1 article Flying Stars: how a chart is built
Shuilong Jing 水龍經, the Water Dragon Classic: A treatise on reading watercourses around a site, associated with the seventeenth-century master Jiang Dahong and translated in Paton’s Five Classics of Fengshui. The source for much of what the Form School says about water in front. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-water-dragon/ Used in 3 articles The texts The water dragon Water features
Tong Shu 通書 tōngshū, the almanac: The Chinese almanac, printed every year since the Tang and still sold in every Chinese city: the calendar with its day officers, its lucky and unlucky days, the directions of the year’s spirits and the tables of what each day is fit for. The tradition’s calendar of when, beside the luopan’s where. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/choosing-a-day/ Used in 8 articles Building and renovating Choosing a day Moving house On the road Recovering at home The baby’s room and 2 more
Yangzhai Shishu 陽宅十書, Ten Books on the Yang House: A Ming compilation, the fullest classical treatment of the house rather than the grave: orientation, doors, the relation of rooms, the calendar. The earliest written form of many rules the modern manuals present as timeless. Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-texts/ Used in 1 article The texts
Zangshu 葬書, the Book of Burial: The fourth-century text attributed to Guo Pu that gives the earliest known definition of feng shui and its name: “qi rides the wind and scatters, but is retained when it encounters water.” Read more →fengshui.info/learn/the-texts/ Used in 6 articles A history of feng shui Feng shui and religion Qi, and what the word does The texts The yin house What is feng shui?