Flying Star Feng Shui

What it is

Flying Star feng shui is a school within feng shui, the Chinese art of siting and arranging buildings. A practitioner draws a chart for a structure from the date it came into use, the direction it faces, and the objects inside and around it. The chart is believed to reveal where good and bad qi collects, sometimes called positive and negative auras. From the nine squares, a specialist is said to judge the wealth of the household, its dealings with outsiders, the success of its members, and their mental and physical state. The method is also used for graves and for buildings meant for spirits.

Where it comes from

Flying Star feng shui is one of the schools within feng shui. It was popularised in the Qing dynasty by the master Shen Zhu Ren, who put the method into a book. English readers know that work as Mr. Shen's Study of Xuan Kong. The tradition is also called Xuan Kong Fei Xing, and its palace method carries a second Chinese name, Jiu Gong Fei Xing.

How it is done

A reading starts with direction. A Luopan, a magnetic compass with several rings, is used to fix a structure's exact bearing. The facing side is the one held to carry the most yang energy; for a flat or a condominium the facing of the whole block is taken, and where there is no clear front, the busiest side is used. The layout is then laid over a grid of nine squares, much like a tic-tac-toe board. Each square is called a palace, and every palace in the finished chart holds three numbers: a base star, a facing star and a sitting star.

Tools and materials

Two instruments stand out. One is the Luopan, a magnetic compass whose rings let a practitioner read a direction closely. The ring that matters most is the 24 Mountains, where each direction is split into three parts. The other is the Lo Shu square, a set of nine numbers. Each number is linked to one of the trigrams and to a wide set of ideas, among them an element, a colour, a family member, a season, an hour and a part of the body. In a building, tall heavy things count as mountains and low or moving things as water.

What it is for

People ask for a reading of a home they own, rent or plan to occupy, and sometimes of a grave. The chart is said to show wealth, the health and mood of those living there, success at work, and how the household gets on with people outside it. A timely star in a palace is held to bring good, an untimely one trouble. The aim in practice is to settle people and objects in squares that carry favourable energy, so the building is thought to support its occupants rather than work against them.

Who does it

The work is done by feng shui masters, senior ones being called grandmasters. Shen Zhu Ren, the figure most closely tied to this school, is remembered as one. A master needs a good compass, ease with numbers, and a working knowledge of the trigrams and the elements. The same person may be asked to read a family house, a plot for the dead, or a building meant for spirits, since the method covers all three.

Peoples and places

Flying Star feng shui belongs to China, and its vocabulary is Chinese throughout: trigrams, the Lo Shu square, the 24 Mountains, the sexagenary cycle and the points of the compass all come from Chinese cosmology. Within feng shui it is one school among several, and it is read for houses of the living, called Yang Zhai, and for graves and buildings for spirits, called Yin Zhai. In cities, tall blocks stand in for mountains and roads for water, so flats, offices and temples are judged by the same rules as a house on open ground.

What people believe

Behind the method is a view of the world in which everything carries qi, a subtle energy. Qi is held to change with time, so the same room or corner can be strong in one period and weak in another. Yin and yang name the two faces of a thing, and the five elements are thought to act on one another in a fixed round. The eight trigrams, long tied to divination, give the nine numbers their meanings. In the period that ran from 2004 to 2023, stars eight, nine and one were counted timely, with star eight the strongest.

When it is done

Time is counted in periods of 20 years, and nine such periods make a grand cycle of 180 years. A building sits in the period when its owners first occupied it, and that period holds unless the structure is heavily rebuilt. Yearly, monthly, daily and two-hourly stars are then added. The Chinese year turns at the beginning of spring, near the fourth of February, and the yearly star steps down by one each year, looping from one back to nine. Daily stars rise from the winter solstice and fall from the summer solstice.

Compare and confuse

Flying Star feng shui is one school within feng shui, and the palace method goes under a Chinese name, Jiu Gong Fei Xing, and an English one, Nine Palace Flying Stars. The school calls itself Xuan Kong Fei Xing, written in English as Xuan Kong Flying Star feng shui. Its charts are sometimes mistaken for a fixed list of good and bad directions, but the method keeps a sector's meaning open: it shifts with the period, the stars and the trigram.

Questions people ask about Flying Star Feng Shui

Good reading and sources

• Flying Star Feng Shui on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data