Feng shui, explained plainly
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
Chi (qi) is the term Chinese cosmology uses for a vital force or breath said to move through the body, the land and buildings alike. “Energy flow” is the English shorthand for how that force is said to circulate — smoothly and beneficially in some configurations, blocked or scattered in others. It is a concept … Read more
Black Sect, or BTB (Black Sect Tantric Buddhist) feng shui, is a school developed in the United States from the 1980s onward by Professor Thomas Lin Yun. It combines Tibetan Buddhist ritual elements with a simplified version of Chinese spatial concepts. Most feng shui advice written in English — the bagua map placed from the … Read more
Form School (Xingshi) judges a site by its physical shape — the hills, water, streets and building outlines around it — and reads chi as something that flows or stalls depending on that shape. Compass School (Liqi) instead calculates direction, using a compass called the luopan and the exact time a building was constructed or … Read more
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