Ba Zhai (八宅)

Your eight personal directions

Overview

Ba Zhai, the Eight Mansions, is one of the most accessible and widely practiced schools of classical feng shui. From a person’s birth year and gender it derives a personal Gua (Ming) number, sorting everyone into either the East group or the West group. Each group is paired with four auspicious directions and four inauspicious ones. By facing the favorable directions when sleeping, working, or seating a desk, and by avoiding the harmful ones, a person aligns their daily orientation with their innate energetic compass. Because it needs only a birth year and a compass, Ba Zhai is the practical entry point into directional feng shui.

Origin & history

Ba Zhai grew out of the Eight Trigrams (Bagua) cosmology of the Yi Jing and the trigram-direction correspondences formalized in the Tang and Song dynasties. Its mature doctrine is preserved in the Qing-dynasty classic Ba Zhai Ming Jing (八宅明鏡, The Bright Mirror of the Eight Mansions), compiled and circulated under the name Ruo Guan Daoren in the eighteenth century.

Rooted in the San Yuan tradition, the Eight Mansions method spread through imperial China as a household-level technique that ordinary families could apply without a master’s full Luo Pan analysis. It pairs the eight trigram house-types with the eight personal Gua to produce the four auspicious stations — Sheng Qi, Tian Yi, Yan Nian, and Fu Wei — and four inauspicious ones, including Jue Ming. Carried by migration across Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the diaspora, it remains among the most taught feng shui systems today.

How it works

The method computes the personal Gua number from birth year and gender, which assigns one of eight trigrams and places the person in the East group (Kan, Li, Zhen, Xun) or West group (Qian, Kun, Gen, Dui). The eight compass sectors are then ranked: the four good directions — Sheng Qi (prosperity), Tian Yi (health), Yan Nian (relationships), Fu Wei (stability) — and the four bad — including Jue Ming (total loss). Beds, desks, and main doors are oriented accordingly. The askTIAN API returns the Gua number, the East or West group, and the full set of four auspicious and four inauspicious directions with their meanings.

Good for

Use cases

Bedroom setup

Position the bed so the sleeper’s head points toward an auspicious direction such as Tian Yi for restorative health.

Desk orientation

Face the Sheng Qi direction while working to support career drive, ambition, and productivity.

Door and entry check

Evaluate whether a main door’s facing supports the household and avoids the Jue Ming station.

Room allocation

Assign bedrooms and study areas to sectors that match each occupant’s East or West group.

Key terms

Gua / Ming number (命卦)
The personal trigram number derived from birth year and gender that determines one’s auspicious directions.
East and West groups (東西四命)
The two families of trigrams into which every person falls, each with its own set of favorable directions.
Sheng Qi (生氣)
The most auspicious direction, associated with vitality, prosperity, and forward momentum.
Jue Ming (絕命)
The most inauspicious direction, linked to total loss, illness, and severe setbacks.

API

The askTIAN Ba Zhai API returns the occupant’s Gua number, East or West group classification, the four auspicious and four inauspicious directions with their interpretations, and a 0–100 score.

Endpoint: POST /trpc/fengshui.baZhai — 3 TIAN Points. See the API documentation and Playground.