This may sound controversial, but in traditional Feng Shui, if you do not use a compass you are only guessing. Authentic Feng Shui requires knowing the orientation. If you guess on the orientation, you are probably wrong. Just because a street seems to run North and South does not make your house orient automatically East or West. Many streets that run North and South are either 1) Generally running North and South or 2) Aligned based on true North in the city planning. Feng Shui uses magnetic North and South to determine the correct orientation. This applies to any of the eight directions. Be accurate, do not guess. We are measuring the earthly qi and its influence on the house.

You can use a western compass to find the orientation, but we prefer the Sang’s Luopan. It has all the necessary readings that someone needs to take an accurate Feng Shui reading and many, many levels of reference material on its face. Some people think that a Sang’s Luopan is too simple. It does not have the thousands of rings that an old-time Feng Shui compass has. The problem with the old fashioned luopans is that many of the rings don’t apply to reading a house or building. In fact, some of the rings relate to mapping the spawning of fish and their seasonality.

So get a proper luopan or compass and take the reading. The reading is not taken from the front door!!! This is so incorrect, it is unimaginable as to how so many people mistakenly do this. The door is the qi mouth, not the deciding factor in the orientation. The reading is taken from the sitting side of the building, facing the building. Another common mistake is people taking the reading in the facing looking at the street with their back to the door. How can one accurately judge the house if they are looking at the street?

Once you get the reading, the sitting side determines the trigram of the house. From their you can begin your analysis.

Remember that you need to be careful on what you read or watch on TV. There is so much erroneous information that you should use your common sense as to what makes sense and discard the rest. Also be careful of how you determine the orientation of the house. If this first key step is incorrect than all the calculations are incorrect and this can result in remedies that can actually create problems rather than promote health, prosperity, and well being.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Feng Shui, Feng Shui Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.