The bagua map (BAH-gwa) is a basic feng shui tool that helps you know which parts of a space - a house, office, room or garden - are related to particular areas of your life.
Once we know which area of a space corresponds to which life aspiration, we can improve that environment so that it can help us achieve our goals (for example, using color psychology can make a room more suitable for relaxation).
There are several ways to use feng shui analysis and the bagua map, which include various schools of thought: the Form school, the Compass school and the Black Hat Sect. As the Black Hat Sect method is the most simple, it relies heavily on intuition rather than specific compass directions, and the bagua is their only tool, we will use the Black Hat method to learn how to read the bagua.
Steps
Step 1. Choose the space you want to analyze:
the whole house, a room or a small space, such as a desk.
Step 2. Stop at the main entrance looking into the room
In the Black Hat Sect method, the main entrance is always the mouth of the chi.
Step 3. Hold the bagua with the Wisdom / Career / Useful People section facing you and parallel to the main entrance wall
The main entrance always falls into the areas of wisdom, career or useful people.
Step 4. Determine which section you are in
For example, if you are analyzing a room, is the entrance you are in located on the left, center or right? The left corner / area is the area of Wisdom, as shown in the bagua map. The central area is that of the Career. The right corner / area is the Helpful People area.
Step 5. Use the bagua map in the same way to determine where to locate the other sections of the bagua map
Once you have identified each area of the bagua, move on to the next step.
Step 6. Place elements corresponding to each area in the same area, in order to increase the suction of that area
Each area of the bagua has a corresponding color and element that are often (but not always) mentioned in the bagua map. Example 1: Place a yellow clay (earth) pot in the Health area to improve your health or that of your family. Example 2: Paint the far wall (in the Fame area) a shade of red to attract a more positive reputation or gain recognition.
Advice
- Sometimes the bagua comes in the form of a 9-section square, sometimes a 9-section octagon. However, they include the same sections and read the same way. If it helps, imagine the octagon as a square divided by a tic-tac-toe board.
- Different bagua maps name the various sections of the bagua in different ways. These different terms are all ways to title and explain the same sections, so there is no need to worry or feel confused. (For example: the Wisdom section may also be called Knowledge or Education; although the terms have different meanings, this section of the bagua includes them all).
- There are 5 basic elements in feng shui: Fire, Metal, Water, Wood and Earth. Other "elements" on the bagua (not included in all bagues) actually refer to one of the basic elements. For example, the Mountains are Earth.
- The corner sections of the bagua have a color that is more auspicious and colors that are less auspicious. For example, the primary color of the Report sector is pink, but white and red (primary colors of neighboring sectors) are also very useful for the Report.
