Feng Shui Bagua - What it Really Means

The Bagua is a collection of eight diagrams used to represent a range of interrelated concepts. Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese art of arrangement which includes the placement of buildings, objects and space in the environment in order to receive good energy, achieve harmony, and maintain a good balance between the person and the person's environment.

Feng "wind" and Shui "water", the natural forces of the universe, were derived based on the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang and have been in practice since thousand of years ago.

Each of the eight diagrams in the Bagua consists of three lines. These lines are either "broken" or "unbroken" representing a Yin or a Yang line respectively. Yin refers to the negative energy while Yang refers to the positive energy.

The Bagua is the result of the ancient Chinese binary system. Each of the Gua consists of three little Yao symbols, which is equivalent to "a bit" in today's binary system. Each Yao or "section" represents either the Yin (female) or Yang (male) force of nature. Due to their tripartite structure, they are often referred to as "trigrams" in English.

The trigrams are related to Taiji philosophy and the I-Ching. The interrelationships among the trigrams are represented in two arrangements; the Primordial known as Earlier Heaven and Manifested, know as Later Heaven. These eight trigrams consist of Heaven, Wind, Water, Mountain, Earth, Thunder, Fire and Lake which correspond to astronomy, astrology, geography, geomancy, anatomy, the family respectively.

The Feng Shui Bagua is an essential tool in majority of the Feng Shui schools. Meanwhile, the Bagua used in the schools can appear in two different versions: (1) The Earlier Heaven Bagua used of burial sites and against undesired qi, and (2) The Later Heaven Bagua used for residential purposes.