Feng Shui Eight House Bright Mirror School Part 3 – The House

If you didn't do this in Part 2 of the Feng Shui Eight House Bright Mirror School series of posts, you need to use a compass and find the direction your house faces. There are some exceptions, but generally speaking the wall that contains your front door is the "face" of your house and is called the "facing" or "faces" direction; the back or opposite side of your house is called the "sitting" or "sits" direction.

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.

This seems as though it should be pretty cut-and-dried: the direction a house faces and sits determines its number just as your year of birth determined your personal ming gua or life sign. However, there's a hitch.

Two sources for this material state that the number that represents your home is based on the house's Facing Direction and the facing is always the Wealth direction. Several other sources say the number of your home is based on the Sitting Direction and the sitting is always the Harmony direction. Obviously, it is going to make quite a difference which is which.

In my experience, the number for the house should be based on the sitting position which is the Harmony direction, and should be on the opposite side from the facing position. Consult the list below to determine your home's direction and number:

If the compass reading is between 22.5 and 67.5 your house faces NE and sits SW
If the compass reading is between 67.5 and 112.5 your house faces E and sits W
If the compass reading is between 112.5 and 157.5 your house faces SE and sits NW
If the compass reading is between 157.5 and 202.5 your house faces S and sits N
If the compass reading is between 202.5 and 247.5 your house faces SW and sits NE
If the compass reading is between 247.5 and 292.5 your house faces W and sits E
If the compass reading is between 292.5 and 337.5 your house faces NW and sits SE
If the compass reading is between 337.5 and 22.5 your house faces N and sits S

Sitting direction and number > Trigram&phase Influences V	N 1 water water	E 3 thunder wood	SE 4 wind wood	S 9 fire fire	SW 2 earth earth	NW 6 sky metal	W 7 lake metal	NE 8 mountain earth
Wealth	SE	S	N	E	NE	W	NW	SW
Health	E	N	S	SE	W	NE	SW	NW
Longevity	S	SE	E	N	NW	SW	NE	W
Harmony	N	E	SE	S	SW	NW	W	NE
Accidents	W	SW	NW	NE	E	SE	N	S
Obstacles	NE	NW	SW	W	SE	E	S	N
Loss	NW	NE	W	SW	S	N	SE	E
Exhaustion	SW	W	NE	NW	N	S	E	SE

On the eight-sectioned circle you printed out from Part 2 where you wrote the influences each direction is to you, write the influences of the house into each section. If you didn't see part two, print the circle below, and follow the link to Part 2 at the end of this post.

You should easily be able now to compare the influences of the home to your personal number and directions. If it looks unfavorable, and it will if you happen to be an East Group person in a West Group house where all the favorable directions of the house are all your unfavorable directions, don't worry.

My favorite feng shui author Eva Wong places most of the emphasis on the number and influences of the person instead of on the dwelling. The most important things to do are to exit the home in one of your favorable directions, and have your bedroom in one of your favorable directions.

You see, your house is passive energy while you are active energy. If you are an East Group person and your favorable energies are water, wood, or fire, you can find it taxing to spend time in areas of the home that are earth and metal, energy phases that are unfavorable for you. Likewise, if you are a West Group person and the energetic influence of earth and metal are good for you, but you live in a home were water, wood, and fire rule, that could weaken your energies after a while. Over a long period of time, the unfavorable directions in a house could have harmful effects on your relationships, health, or finances, but it's more likely that the effects of your personal directions and active energies will offset potentially damaging influences.

My personal experience bears this out. My husband and I moved into a home in 1999 that sits NW and faces SE. My husband is a ming gua 7, and I am a ming gua 4. Since my husband and the house are both West Group, and I am East Group, this should have made the surroundings more favorable for him and less favorable for me. That is not what happened.

Our home and the exits we most often depart from, the front door or the garage, face SE. SE for me is the Harmony direction, and for my husband it is the Loss direction. Less than three years later, my husband was "downsized," he lost his job. Within the same three year period, I worked at a wonderful job that was not too busy or strenuous, and the pay, while not enough to make a person wealthy, was enough to comfortably cover expenses – exactly what I would expect when going to work in my Harmony direction.

The sitting direction (the Harmony direction) of the house is NW, and that is where the kitchen is located. NW is my Accidents direction, and I tend to be a klutz around sharp objects, so there is great potential for Accidents in the kitchen with cutters, knifes and other sharp objects. Since moving in to this house, I have certainly had my normal share of cuts and burns while cooking. Apparently the Harmony of the house has not overcome my tendency toward Accidents in this direction. Not only that, I almost set the house on fire one night while making stir-fry…good thing my husband was working on the kitchen computer and was there to help me douse it! In over 30 years of cooking meals for my family, this was the first time I have ever had an almost-fire in the kitchen! So, I don't believe this direction in the house has a lot of Harmonious and balancing influence on my propensity for kitchen Accidents.

For my adult son who is also a West Group person but whose SE direction represents Obstacles, I observed that he often found something "in his way" when applying for a job or obtaining things he wanted. My conclusion after these experiences is that Eva Wong is right on when she says the directions for the person are more important than the directions of the building.

If you missed the first two posts on Eight House Bright Mirror Feng Shui, you can catch them here: Part 1 – Ming Gua and Part 2 – The Directions.

The next step in feng shui is the Flying Star style which evaluates the energies of your home over periods of time. Unfortunately, that topic is more complicated than I can properly cover in this space. If you would like to learn more about it, I very highly recommend Eva Wong's book Feng-Shui: The Ancient Wisdom of Harmonious Living for Modern Times