Feng Shui Encyclopedia

A glossary of feng shui terms—qi, yin-yang, form school, bagua, command position—with links into the beginner guides and tools.

This page is a glossary, not a fortune-telling dictionary. Each entry names a term, shows how to recognize it at home, and links the longer argument to a guide or tool. Wind-and-water, qi, and the two schools are argued on What Is Feng Shui?. Room how-tos live on Home Design. Ming gua and flying stars are slices after the door and bed are livable.

Traditional books sometimes pair a layout fault with an illness name. Treat those as memory aids for “this geometry is stressful,” not as diagnosis. Health questions belong with a clinician.

A study table with a floor-plan notebook, wooden ruler, and daylight—no occult charms

Foundations

Qi / Chi

Qi (also written ch’i or chi) is the classical name for the “breath” of a site: how arrival, movement, and rest feel. You do not have to treat it as a particle. In a flat it tracks things you can photograph—draft, light, clutter, and whether people can enter without a fight. Classical notes are blunt: wind that blasts a ridge scatters qi; slow, bounded water holds it; a straight rush becomes harsh. At home, the door you actually use is the mouth; a landing of shoes and mail is a blocked throat; a bowling-alley corridor aimed at the sofa is a dart. A dark unused corner is not a mystery. Test the flow; the longer qi argument sits on the beginner guide.

See also: What Is Feng Shui?

Yin-Yang

Yin and yang are complementary, not good versus evil. Yin tends toward rest, shade, storage, and yielding; yang toward movement, light, heat, and activity. Each needs the other. A home that is only yang never lets you sleep; one that is only yin never lets you cook or greet anyone. Match the job of the room to its stimulus: bedrooms want dimmer, backed rest; kitchens want daylight and a clear work path. A glass-wall bedroom with a laptop on the nightstand is too yang for sleep. A stove buried in storage with blackout blinds is too yin to cook. Landscape mappings disagree across schools. For an apartment: does the room’s job match how loud, bright, and exposed it is? Five-element colors come after this.

Kan Yu

Kan yu (堪舆) is the older Chinese name for the work later called feng shui: surveying land and settling a dwelling. Classical use included both yang houses (homes of the living) and yin houses (burial sites). The phrase is closer to environmental order than to a brand of accessories. You are asking where weather, traffic, and people enter; where a body can rest off the thoroughfare; what sits behind that rest so it does not feel exposed. If a room fails those tests, no ornament fixes it. Juhe keeps kan yu as a reminder that the practice started as site reading, not as a product catalog. Cemetery rules are historical context, not a service we sell.

See also: What Is Feng Shui?

Sheng Qi

Sheng qi (生气) names supportive, gathering flow—the opposite of a harsh dart. Popular books also use sheng chi for an individual’s “best” compass direction from a kua number. On this site, unless we say “personal direction,” we mean the layout sense: meandering arrival, a door that can open fully, a path that turns instead of shooting through, a seat with backing. Fast water, a wind-tunnel stair, or a straight view from entry to TV is the pattern teachers say does not hold sheng qi. You can photograph the difference in two identical apartments: one turns toward a clear living room; the other dumps shoes in the swing and aims the corridor at the screen. Form school starts here. Personal “sheng chi” facing is a later compass slice.

Sha Qi

Sha qi (煞气) is the harsh pattern: qi that speeds in a straight line, stagnates in a blocked corner, or presses from a sharp edge. Outdoor examples include a long road aimed at a door (“poison arrow”) or a bridge that accelerates flow. Indoor examples: door rush onto a bed, a beam over the pillow, a toilet door on the entry axis, clutter that never lets air turn. Traditional wellness texts also call stagnant, unused rooms “unhealthy chi” and map them onto the body. We keep that as traditional language, not a medical claim. What you can do tonight is geometric: offset the bed, break the sight line with a real partition, move sleep out from under the beam, open or light the dead corner. Mirrors and objects are optional after the path is clear.

Methods

Form School

Form school (形法) reads shape: hills and water outdoors; doors, paths, backing, and beams indoors. It is the older stream. You practice it with eyes and a floor plan—no needle required. Interior teachers often rank three pieces first: the main door (how the house takes people in), the kitchen (food), and the bedroom (rest). That is a priority list, not a superstition. Score those rooms before talking about lucky objects. Form school can disagree with a compass reading on the same rental: the bed may have no wall while the chart wants the head west. Juhe starts with form because renters in steel-framed buildings often cannot rotate the house, and wiring can muddy a needle. Geometry still works when true north is a guess.

Compass School

Compass school (理气) reads facing, time, and personal directions against a chart. Later layers include the luo-pan, the Lo Shu square, flying stars, and ming gua. You need a reliable facing and, often, a birth date. It is younger than form school and useful when the building cooperates. It struggles when streets, steel, and fixed doors make the needle a guess. Juhe treats compass tools as refinements: house facing first, then personal or annual slices. Do not keep a geometrically bad bed because a sector is “lucky.” Fix the rush and the backing, then overlay the chart. Schools disagree; we do not paper that over.

Bagua overlay

A bagua overlay places eight life areas (plus a center) on a plan. Western / Black Hat habits often align the map to the entry wall—the door you actually use. Classical compass habits align a sector to magnetic north. Those two maps will not match on the same apartment; say which method you are using. The overlay is a diagnostic template, not a sticker pack. Decorating every gua at once is how rooms become cluttered. Work one sector that matches a real job (sleep, work, cooking). Missing corners are building geometry, not a curse. Body-part correspondences in some books (eyes in Fame, heart in the center) are traditional mnemonics, not medical maps. The full debate belongs on the bagua guide, not here.

Lo Shu

The Lo Shu is a 3×3 square of the numbers 1–9 in which every row, column, and diagonal sums to 15. Compass school uses it as the skeleton under the bagua’s nine halls and under flying stars, which “fly” those numbers through time. At home you meet it as a grid on the plan, not as a magic object. The center cell is the middle of that grid—related to, but not identical with, the geometric house center. You do not need to memorize the turtle-legend to use a nine-palace overlay. If you only want entry-aligned life areas, stay on the bagua guide. If you want year charts, the flying-stars tool is the slice.

Flying Stars

Flying stars (飞星) is a time-based compass method: numerological “stars” move through the nine Lo Shu palaces by period, year, and sometimes month. Classical books treat it as its own school alongside form and compass. It can mark which sector is busy or harsh this year. It cannot move a beam or invent a wall behind the pillow. Juhe’s flying stars tool is a chart slice, not a full in-home audit and not a medical forecast. Use it after form-school checks: door, backing, rush. Traditional star-to-illness tables stay in the knowledge base as folklore, not as advice. If the annual map conflicts with a livable bed, keep the bed.

Form-school layout

Command position

Command position places a bed or desk so you can see the door without lying in its path—typically diagonal to the opening, mattress or chair offset from the rush line. The opposite is sometimes called the coffin or mortuary position: feet or spine aimed straight at the doorway. Command is form-school geometry, not a lucky corner of the bagua. In a narrow bedroom you may only get a partial view plus a solid headboard; that is a compromise, not failure. Mirrors that bounce the door into your face, a bed in the walkway, or a desk with your back to the only entrance are the usual misses. Room-by-room placement belongs on Home Design, not in this glossary.

Backing

Backing (靠山) means a solid mass behind rest or work: a wall behind the pillow, a real sofa back, a hill or neighboring building behind a house. Classical landscape talk uses the Black Tortoise for that support. Indoors the test is simpler: if you sit or sleep with a void, a window, or a walkway at your spine, the body stays slightly on guard. A thick headboard on a window wall is a repair, not the ideal. A bed floating in the middle of the room “lacks support” in traditional language; in daily language you sleep as if on a raft. Push rest to a wall before you buy a mountain painting. Backing is one of the three form checks Juhe scores first, alongside door view and rush.

Door rush

Door rush is a straight line of movement from an opening across a body at rest—bed, stove, or desk. Teachers file it under sha qi. Traditional interior manuals sometimes say a door line that “cuts” the bed invites rheumatism; treat that as a stress mnemonic, not a diagnosis. The observable problem is draft, traffic, and a startle reflex every time the door opens. Fixes are geometric: shift the furniture out of the reach of the door, add a real screen that breaks the sight line, or change which door you use. A hanging charm in the rush does not move the line. If the rush is the front door into the bedroom, that is a Home Design problem, not a bagua-sticker problem.

Beam over bed

A beam over the bed—especially over the head—is treated as a pressure line. A sharply sloped ceiling over the pillow is often grouped with the same rule. You can feel the edge even if you do not believe in sha: the volume above you is chopped. Traditional notes extend beams to stove and main door as a class of “cutting” forms. Juhe’s first advice is to move sleep out from under the edge. If the beam is structural and the bed cannot move, a soffit or fabric that breaks the knife-line is a repair, not a crystal. Do not turn this glossary into a bedroom how-to; the worked layouts sit on the bedroom hub.

Mouth of qi / Shui Kou

The mouth of qi is the opening that actually draws people, air, and light into a room or house. Classical interior language also says shui kou (水口, “water mouth”) for a door as an intake. The front door you use is the primary mouth of the dwelling; a stair can be described as a second mouth that carries flow between floors. Two doors in a short straight line (bedroom to kitchen, front to back) pull movement through like a pipe—smoke, noise, and drafts included. The test tonight: can the door open fully, and does the path turn before it hits a bed or a stove? Shoes belong in a closed unit, not as a wall in the swing. Room recipes stay on Home Design.

Personal charts

Ming Gua

Ming gua (命卦), also called ming kua or kua number, is a personal trigram derived mainly from birth year (with a lunar-new-year caveat and gendered formulas in popular manuals). Eight-house / east-west methods use it to name favorable sitting and facing for sleep, study, and eating. Example language: gua 3 (Zhen) as an east-group type with a set of preferred directions. Calculation details and disagreements between manuals belong in the tool, not in this index. Form school still comes first: a backed bed that sees the door beats a “lucky” facing with your spine in the rush. Juhe’s ming gua page is a personal slice, not a whole-house audit.

East/West people

East-group and west-group people (东四命 / 西四命) sort ming-gua numbers into two camps. Common popular grouping: east 1, 3, 4, 9; west 2, 6, 7, 8, with 5 folded into west-group neighbors by gender in many kua tables. East types share a pool of east/north/southeast/south directions; west types share west/northwest/southwest/northeast. Partners from opposite groups will not share one “perfect” bed facing. Traditional compromise: give the door to one person’s directions and the bed to the other’s, so each gets one supported axis. This is compass language. If the only solid wall fights both charts, keep the wall. The site tool computes the slice; it does not rearrange your landlord’s doors.

Three Lucks

Three Lucks (天时、地利、人和—or Heaven, Earth, and Human luck in popular English) is a traditional frame: some of life is given (birth, era, family), some is effort and habit, some is the place you inhabit. Feng shui, in that frame, is earth luck—the part you can rearrange with walls and furniture. Popular teachers sometimes claim that improving the room also lifts mood and “destiny.” That is a teaching story, not a testable product claim. This site’s tools are slices of earth luck only: form-school scores, optional compass charts. We do not calculate heaven luck, karma, or personality. Use Three Lucks as a humility check—layout is not the whole of a life—then return to the door and the bed.

Space

Tian Xin

Tian xin (天心, often “heart of heaven” or 宅心) is used in two related ways. In a nine-palace overlay it is the center cell—the bagua’s health/middle hall, the Lo Shu 5. In ordinary floor-plan talk it is the geometric middle of the dwelling, where paths cross. Neither meaning is a mystical reactor in the floor slab. Classical interior rules dislike a stove, toilet, or stair planted on that middle because the house then has fire, drain, or constant traffic in the “heart.” Traditional texts may pair a center stove with “heart” illness; that is a correspondence mnemonic, not cardiology. Keep the center as open, lit, and unblocked as the plan allows. For life-area overlays, use the bagua guide’s center gua, not a secret core.

Staircase

A staircase is a vertical corridor: it carries people and, in classical language, qi between floors. Some manuals call it the second mouth of the house (气口). The stair itself is necessary in a multi-level home; the issue is alignment and location. Common warnings: a run aimed at the front door (flow shoots out), a stair in the exact center (traffic on the heart), a mouth facing a toilet or bedroom door (draft and startle). Spiral runs are sometimes tagged as “corkscrew sha” in twentieth-century books. Practical checks: can you land without aiming at the pillow or the WC, and does the stair steal the only daylight from a rest room? Fortune claims about family unity are traditional; the photographable test is path and noise. Room how-tos stay on Home Design.

Front–back door alignment

Front–back door alignment (前后门对穿) is a straight sight line from the main entry through to a back door or a rear window, often within a short run. Classical interior notes call the unturned blast wu qing—energy that never settles—and say income “dries” because nothing has time to circulate. In daily language, a hallway becomes a wind tunnel: heat, privacy, and quiet leak. Traditional remediation is a real turn: a cabinet or partition so you cannot see out the back the moment you enter, or a habit of not leaving both openings wide at once. A hanging bead curtain is a weak substitute for mass. This is the same family of problems as door rush and sha qi, scaled to the whole dwelling. Score the path before decorating a “wealth” corner.

FAQ

Is this encyclopedia a complete feng shui dictionary?

No. It is an index of terms Juhe uses in guides and tools. Argument and room recipes live elsewhere on the site.

Should I treat health correspondences as medical advice?

No. Traditional books pair layout faults with body parts. Use them as reminders that a geometry is stressful. Diagnosis belongs with a clinician.

Do I start with bagua or with form school?

Start with form: door, backing, rush, beams, clutter. Overlay bagua or flying stars after the bed and the path are livable.

Where do objects and cures fit?

After the path is clear. A charm does not offset a bed in the door’s rush.

Next step

Keep this page as a map of words. When a term shows up in a report, follow See also. To score your own walls—self-serve, not a booking—run a Free Home Check.

Wiki sources (concepts): chi, yin-yang, kan-yu, sheng-chi, sha-chi, form-school, compass-school, form-school-compass-school, bagua, bagua-placement-methods, lo-shu-magic-square, flying-star, command-position, bed-wall-support, door-cutting-bed-rheumatism, beam-over-bed, shui-kou-door-qi, qi-kou, ming-kua / kua-number, east-people-west-people, three-lucks, bagua-center-size, kitchen-stove-house-center-prohibition, staircase-feng-shui, front-back-door-alignment. Health correspondences are not medical claims. Tian xin here = geometric / nine-palace center.

Traditional books sometimes pair a layout fault with an illness name. Treat those as memory aids for “this geometry is stressful,” not as diagnosis. Health questions belong with a clinician.

A study table with a floor-plan notebook, wooden ruler, and daylight—no occult charms