Feng shui is easier to learn in the right order, and this section is that order. The vocabulary comes first — Qi, the two polarities, the Five Elements, the Bagua — and only then the methods that use it: the compass reading, the Flying Stars chart, the BaZi chart, the personal directions of the Kua number. Everything the rest of the knowledge base does is built on the handful of topics collected here.

Qi, Yin and Yang

The practice begins with Qi (气), the vital energy that moves through spaces, bodies and time. Reading a home means reading where Qi gathers, where it is blocked and where it drains away, and the whole of feng shui can be described as the art of managing its quality and its direction.

Yin and Yang are the two polarities it moves between, and every judgement in a reading uses them: light against shadow, still against moving, inward against outward, rest against activity. A balanced space is not a fifty-fifty split but a living play between the two, and the section shows what that looks like in an ordinary home.

The Five Elements and the Bagua

The Five Elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water — are the vocabulary of correspondence: each one carries a season, a colour, a direction, an organ and a temperament. They are more than a list of materials, because they interact through the generating and the controlling cycles, and those two cycles are what a practitioner uses to strengthen, weaken or harmonise an area.

The Eight Trigrams do the same work for direction. Each three-line figure maps a compass direction onto a family member, a body part and a set of life aspirations, which is what makes a Bagua map possible at all, and why the two classical arrangements behind it — Early Heaven and Later Heaven — are still studied. The He Tu shows how the numbers underlying both were originally paired.

Where to start

Start with Qi and the elements; leave the compass for later. If you would rather see the whole picture before the parts, the full guide to classical feng shui puts the system together in one piece. Every article here also stands on its own, so you can jump straight to the question you arrived with and work outwards from there.