How To Superimpose Feng Shui Charts

There is indeed a skill to extracting maximum benefits from your feng shui practice - first you learn the different methods and formulas, then you learn to apply the formulas. For this you need to superimpose the different charts onto your floor space. Here is where secrets gleaned through experience can be very useful. It is your accuracy of practice that brings clarity to feng shui applications. There are so many different permutations to the parameters of space - different levels to cope with as well as irregular shapes and modular type homes. Getting things right can be frustrating - and when mistakes are made, feng shui becomes ineffective.

In this issue, LILLIAN TOO offers helpful suggestions on how to superimpose feng shui charts onto your floor space.


The key to NOT making mistakes in applying feng shui charts is to ensure the following three steps are undertaken with accuracy:

Always use a compass

Use a proper compass to take directions from the center of the house OR at least to get your orientations – i.e. where each of the direction sectors lie. You must know where the North is for instance, and where the South is. Here I am referring to compass sector as opposed to compass direction. So you will need to differentiate between location and direction. And of course, needless to say, you will need to know how to read a simple magnetic compass.

Sketch a layout plan

Next you must learn how to sketch out (or at least know how to read) a layout plan of your space. A draughtsman or your architect can have this drawn. Once you know how to do this, you will know how to mark out the different compass locations on the layout plan. You will know how to pinpoint where each of the eight sector directions are located in your home by reading it from the layout plan. You will know which rooms fall into the different locations


Fill up the information

Thirdly, you will need to fill in the information from a feng shui chart onto your layout plan. Once you learn to extract information from a chart and place them onto your plan, you will be able to superimpose just about any feng shui chart onto your house.

Remember that to get the exercise right, you will need a workable magnetic compass and a well-drawn sketch of the floor plan. It is best when the layout plan has been drawn to scale. Once you have such a plan and have taken the compass directions accurately, you will find it becomes easy to superimpose any feng shui chart onto any house plan.

In fact, it is a lot easier to work off a well-sketched floor plan than it is to work on-site. Usually, going on an on-site investigation is for the feng shui consultant to assess physical structures that affect the building under investigation, as well as to take correct compass directions.

Once these have been determined, the key factor becomes how well you are able to superimpose the feng shui chart onto floor plans. This is usually not a problem when you are dealing with a regular-shaped house that sits on level terrain. Difficulties are encountered when you have to deal with irregular-shaped, modular and split-level houses. Then it becomes necessary to determine how to best superimpose the chart onto the plan.

One way is to find the center of the home. In feng shui terms, this is called looking for the heart of the home.

Square or rectangular shaped buildings are easy. To find the center, just connect the extremities of the building with imaginary diagonal lines; the physical center of the building is where the lines cross. You can then superimpose the feng shui chart on the basis of the center of the chart. When dealing with irregular or asymmetrical buildings, you can use the sketches shown below as a guide. Note that “missing corners” get created when shapes are irregular.

The illustration here shows how to superimpose a Period 8 flying star chart onto a NE 2 facing house.


Note that we first determine the facing direction of the house. This fixes the facing palace to be the Northeast sector. This is usually the foyer area of a house. Here the numbers of the different grids of the flying star chart are then “fixed” onto the layout plan of the house. This will help you to then start to analyse the effect of the numbers in the different rooms of the house.