Feng Shui
Feng Shui, ‘wind and water’, is the Chinese art of arranging buildings and spaces to harmonise with qi, the flow of life energy. It works with directions, the bagua, the five elements and personal directions from your Kua number.
Also known as: fengshui
The name comes from an old line in the Book of Burial: qi scatters on the wind and gathers where it meets water. Feng Shui looks for places and layouts where qi collects gently, neither rushing through nor going stale.
There are two classical approaches. The Form school reads the shape of land, buildings and rooms. The Compass school uses the luo pan compass and includes the Eight Mansions (Ba Zhai) method, which gives each person four favourable and four unfavourable directions from their Kua number, and Flying Stars, which adds timing. Many Western books use a simplified bagua laid from the front door instead.
Its tools include the bagua, eight trigrams set around a centre, each tied to a direction and an area of life, and the five elements, wood, fire, earth, metal and water, which feed or restrain one another. Feng Shui and Vastu share a love of light and order, but their details differ: Vastu gives the south-east to fire and the kitchen, the bagua gives it to wood and wealth.
Feng Shui is often reduced to lucky objects such as laughing Buddhas, coins and wind chimes. These are popular cures, but classical Feng Shui is mainly about layout, direction and flow, and it works best in a tidy, well-lit home.