Feng shui, explained plainly
Feng shui rules contradict each other because “feng shui” is not a single rulebook. It is several distinct traditions — Form School, Compass School, and the modern Western Black Sect (BTB) adaptation — that use different methods, ask different questions, and were never reconciled with each other. Most contradictions disappear once you know which school … Read more
A feng shui compass — properly a luopan — is a specialised instrument used in Compass School (Liqi) feng shui to take a precise directional reading of a building, then cross-reference that direction against rings of traditional data. Whether a reader needs one depends entirely on which school of feng shui is being followed, and … Read more
No peer-reviewed evidence supports feng shui’s core metaphysical claims — that chi (qi) flows through a room in ways a compass reading can measure, or that a home’s orientation affects a resident’s luck or wealth. Separately, there is real evidence, from architecture and environmental psychology, that some of feng shui’s practical advice — daylight, clear … Read more
Feng shui claims that the arrangement, orientation and condition of a space affect the people who live in it — their comfort, mood, sleep and sense of control. It does not claim, in any classical or serious source, to guarantee wealth, love, fertility or health. Outcome promises of that kind belong to marketing, not to … Read more
A poison arrow is the common English term for what classical Chinese sources call sha qi (煞气) — a straight, unbroken line of force said to run toward a building, a door, or a person’s seat. It is usually produced by a sharp corner, a straight road, an exposed beam, or any hard edge pointed … Read more
The destructive cycle (also called the controlling or overcoming cycle) is a fixed sequence describing how each of the five elements in feng shui is said to weaken or restrain another. Practitioners use it diagnostically — to explain why a room or object combination feels wrong — and corrective, to weaken an element judged excessive. … Read more
The productive cycle is the sequence in which the five elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water — are said to generate or feed one another: Wood fuels Fire, Fire creates Earth (ash), Earth yields Metal (ore), Metal enriches Water (as a vessel or through condensation), and Water nourishes Wood. It runs in a … Read more
The five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal and water — are a classification system from Chinese cosmology used to describe how qualities of a space, object or material relate to each other. Feng shui borrows this system to explain which combinations are said to support each other and which are said to conflict. What … Read more
There is no single answer, because two different traditions orient a bagua map in two incompatible ways. The Western Black Sect (BTB) adaptation lines the map up with the front door regardless of which way it faces. Classical Compass School lines it up with true magnetic or geographic direction, door position aside. Which one applies … Read more
The bagua is an eight-sided diagrammatic map that practitioners overlay onto a room, a home, or a piece of land, dividing it into eight zones plus a centre, each linked to a theme such as career, family, health or wealth. How it is applied — and from where it is measured — differs sharply between … Read more
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