Feng Shui Eight House Bright Mirror School Part 1 - Ming Gua

After the Form or Landform school of feng shui comes Eight House Bright Mirror (ba zhai ming jing). This is where the bagua (eight signs) comes into the practice.

A traditional Eight House (sometimes called Eight Mansion) reading measures and determines the energies of eight areas in your home based upon the direction of the front and back of the dwelling, and it compares these energies to the energy of You as determined by your year of birth to determine favorable and unfavorable areas. There will be four favorable directions and four unfavorable directions. There are a variety of names used, but basically, the favorable directions represent Prosperity, Health, Longevity, and Harmony. The unfavorable directions represent Difficulties, Loss, Obstacles, and Exhaustion.

However, before I talk about your home, I have to talk about You.

If you have any feng shui consultation done and the consultant does not ask you the year of your birth, and the year of birth for all the people living in the house, you are not – I repeat NOT – receiving a traditional feng shui reading.

The energy of You is called your ming gua, your "life symbol" (gua can mean symbol, sign, or trigram) and represents the energies symbolized by one of eight three-line figures called trigrams. You can see the trigrams in their directions with their numbers, Chinese names, and energy phases:

A proper feng shui reading cannot be done without knowing your ming gua. To say that the energy directions of everyone's home is the same is like doing an astrology reading for every person using the same birth date! You would never accept an astrology reading done under those circumstances, so you should also not tolerate a feng shui reading that does not take into account your personal energy signature, and your home's true directional energy as measured with a compass.

Just as your body has unique areas of measurable energy, so too does your home. Just as your doctor would not measure your brain waves and call it an electrocardiogram, or use an electrocardiogram of your heart's activity to diagnose a possible brain dysfunction, so too your front door should not be used to asses your potential for wealth if it is not in that area, and you cannot seriously expect the energy which enters through your front door to behave as if the door faced the north if it really faces east!

As an example, let’s say sunrise in the east represents Wealth. Your feng shui consultant comes in and says your front door is your East/Wealth area. However, you know that your front door actually faces west. You can get up at dawn every day of the year and sit in your doorway, but you are never going to have the energy of sunrise enter through your front door no matter how diligent you are because the door does not really face the direction of sunrise.

Feng shui is about energy; real, measurable energy and the changes of that energy, the cycles of that energy, and the interactions of different directions and cycles of that energy (for example, the cycle of You and the cycle of your House). As soon as the bagua, the eight signs and directions, is used to assess that energy, feng shui ceases to be one-size-fits-all and becomes very personalized. Don't settle for anything less!

You can calculate your personal trigram or ming gua by completing a very simple calculation.

First, determine your birth year. I know, that sounds a bit like a no-brainer, but the cycle used to determine annual energy in feng shui begins on February 4th or 5th depending on the position of the sun. For people born on a date from January 1 through February 3, you will use the number for the previous year: i.e. if your birth date is January 14, 1972, you will use 1971 as your year of birth. If your date of birth is February 4 or 5, you will need to find out the solar calendar new year date for that year.

Once you have your proper year of birth:

First, add together the four digits of your birth year: 1 + 9 + 7 + 1 = 18

Second, if needed, continue adding until you have a single digit: 1 + 8 = 9

Third, for a woman: add 4 to the number from step two: 4 + 9 = 13. If this results in a two-digit number, add those together to get a single-digit number: 1 + 3 = 4.

Third, for a man: subtract from 11 the number from step two: 11 – 9 = 2.

Fourth, for men and women, if the calculations in step three result in 5, women use the number 8 as your ming gua, and men use the number 2 as your ming gua. We transform the number 5 into either 2 or 8 because 5 is reserved for the center and is not assigned a direction or a trigram.

Find your number in the eight-sided figure above. That is your direction, along with your environmental energy signature – one of the five phases of energy: earth, metal, water, wood, or fire.

Next time, I'll talk about how to determine the directions of your home, and how to use the information you have calculated.

If you like, you may get a compass and take a reading on the facing direction of your house. Set aside your jewelry while you do this. Stand with your back to the front door but away from the door frame or beams so the metal or nails don't affect the compass reading of the direction you are facing. (If your front door were your home's eyes, you and your house should be looking in the same direction, facing the same way.) Write down the degree number on the compass; i.e. if your home faces due south, the compass should read close to 180 degrees. You may also take a couple more readings from different places along the front of your home, but facing in the same direction, just to make sure there is nothing affecting the compass reading. You will use the number and direction from the reading to determine the areas and energies of your home.

Until next time….Explore the Mystery of Life!