Mirrors

No object has more feng shui attached to it than the mirror, and almost none of it is classical. The texts that read landforms had nothing to say about a bronze disc on a wall; the manuals of the last forty years have a chapter each. What survives from all of it is a small set of rules that are really rules about sightlines, and they are worth having, because a mirror is a second window that shows whatever it is pointed at. This guide gives the mirror’s older history, which explains the one on the door, the placements the schools agree on, and the three shapes of bagua mirror with what each does to a line.

The mirror before feng shui

The Chinese mirror was bronze, round, polished on one face and cast on the other, and for most of its history it was a cosmological object before it was a domestic one. The mirrors of the Han carry on their backs the pattern scholars call TLV, after the shapes of its marks: a square in a circle, the earth in the heavens, with the four animals of the directions between and the marks of the diviner’s board around the edge, the same board from which the luopan descends. Loewe’s study of them reads the pattern as a map of the cosmos and the mirror as a device for placing its owner in it, and the inscriptions on the rims ask for long life and the company of the immortals. Mirrors went into tombs by the thousand, hung on the walls or laid on the body, to light the dark and to keep it in order.

What a mirror does, in the tradition’s terms

Fig. 01 Three mirrors and one person, drawn face-on. A: a mirror whose top is above the tallest head in the house, so that everyone sees themselves whole with air above; the height the manuals ask for. B, ghosted: a mirror hung so that its top edge crosses the head, which the manuals read as cutting it and which the eye, less dramatically, reads as a mirror hung too low. C, ghosted: a wall of mirror tiles, which shows a body in pieces; the manuals refuse them for the same reason they refuse cracked glass. The rule of height is the one rule about mirrors that every school shares, and the one most often broken by a mirror bought for a wall it does not fit. A mirror should show the whole head of the tallest person with a hand’s breadth above it, and the whole body where it is meant to.

Before any question of where a mirror goes comes the question of how high, and the drawing gives the one rule every school shares. A mirror should show the tallest person in the house their whole head with air above it, which in most houses means a top edge at about two metres; a mirror that cuts the head is the manuals’ first fault and the decorator’s commonest, a mirror bought for a wall it does not fit. Mirror tiles and mosaics, which show a body in pieces, are refused for the reason cracked glass is refused. The site’s reading is plainer than the manuals’: a mirror should show a person as they are, whole and upright, or it should not be there.

Where it goes

Plan 02 Mirrors in a flat: on the side wall of the hall, opposite the window, inside the wardrobe door; not facing the door, the bed or each other Solid mirrors are the placements the tradition allows: along the side wall of a narrow hall, on the wall opposite a window so that the room gets the light twice, and inside a wardrobe door where it is seen only when wanted. Ghosted mirrors are the ones every manual names: facing the front door, facing the bed, and facing another mirror across a hall.

The good placements are the ones that give a room something it lacks. On the side wall of a narrow hall a mirror widens it, and the eye is grateful. On the wall opposite a window it shows the window twice and brings the light into the back of the room. Beside a desk that has its back to the door it shows the door, which the desk placement guide gives as the remedy for a desk that cannot be moved. Inside a wardrobe door it is there when it is wanted and gone when it is not. Reflecting a garden or a view, it lets a room look out where it has no window.

The placements every manual names against are the ones that show the wrong thing. Facing the front door, so that the first thing anyone sees on entering is themselves coming in. Facing the bed, for the reasons the mirror guide draws. Facing another mirror, so that the hall repeats itself forever. Reflecting the toilet, the stairs, the bin, the corner where things pile up, because a mirror doubles what it sees and the tradition would rather see those things once. Tiled or fragmented mirrors, which show a person in pieces. And any mirror hung so low that a standing person loses their head in it.

Bagua mirrors

The small octagonal mirror with the eight trigrams round it belongs outside. It is hung over a door or a window to face a road, a ridge or a neighbouring corner, and the tradition’s reasoning is that it reflects sha back where it came from. Inside a house the same reasoning says it reflects sha into the rooms, which is why the older practice keeps it out and why this site does not recommend it indoors. A neighbour who hangs one facing your door has, in the tradition’s terms, aimed something at you; the customary answer, in Hong Kong and elsewhere, is a taller one, and Bruun records the escalations. A hedge is the better reply.

Fig. 03 The three bagua mirrors, in plan, with a line arriving from the upper left and leaving as the glass dictates. A: a flat mirror sends the line back at the angle it came, which is the tradition’s reflect-it-back, and is hung to face the thing it answers. B: a convex mirror, the common kind sold with the trigrams round it, scatters what reaches it, so that a line arriving as one leaves as three; the tradition reads it as dispersing the sha rather than returning it, and it is the one most manuals recommend over a door. C: a concave mirror gathers what reaches it to a point before it spreads again, and the schools that use it hang it to draw something in, a view or a water; it is rare, and the site does not recommend it, since a mirror that gathers gathers whatever is there. The reflections are computed from the curvature, not drawn by eye: the rays obey the ordinary law of reflection, and the tradition’s three uses are what the three geometries actually do to light. All three belong outside; the one flat mirror the tradition allows indoors is the plain domestic one, without the trigrams.

The mirrors come in three shapes, and the shops sell all three. The flat mirror returns a line at the angle it arrived, and is the one hung to answer a particular thing, a road end or a corner, squarely. The convex mirror, the common kind, scatters whatever reaches it, and is the one most manuals recommend over a door on the reasoning that a sha dispersed is better than a sha returned to a neighbour who will return it again. The concave mirror gathers what reaches it to a point, and the schools that use it hang it to draw something wanted into the house, a view, a water, the light of a particular direction; it is rare, and the site leaves it to the specialists, since a mirror that gathers gathers whatever happens to be there. The drawing computes the three from the curvature of the glass, and the tradition’s three uses turn out to be, exactly, what the three geometries do to light. The trigrams round the rim are usually the Earlier Heaven arrangement, the one the bagua essay describes as the world in balance, which is the cosmos the mirror is asking the sha to respect.

Checklist

On a side wall, opposite a window, inside a wardrobe door, beside a desk that cannot see the door
Not facing the front door
Not facing the bed, the desk or the dining chair for long
Not facing another mirror
Not reflecting the toilet, the stairs or the clutter
Whole, not tiled; hung to show a whole head
Bagua mirrors outside only, if at all; convex over a door, flat to answer one thing, concave left alone