Eight-house feng shui is a traditional feng shui theory that gauges fortune and misfortune by the yardstick of a home's direction. As its name says, it divides a home into eight types, and the standards for this are the direction in which the gate faces, the direction in which the main bedroom sits, and the direction in which the kitchen is placed. People of old regarded these three spots as the core passages through which a home's energy enters, dwells, and is nurtured. The gate is the mouth through which outside energy comes in; the main bedroom is the place where a person rests deeply and recharges energy; and the kitchen, where fire is handled to make food, was seen as the kitchen of life. So by examining how the directions of these three places harmonize, they read the character of the whole home.
The eight types of the eight houses are in turn grouped into two large companies. One is the East house family, and the other is the West house family. To the East house family belong homes facing north by Kan, east by Jin, southeast by Son, and south by Ri. To the West house family belong homes facing northwest by Geon, west by Tae, northeast by Gan, and southwest by Gon. Homes within the East family were seen to let the grain of energy flow well among themselves, and the West family likewise harmonizes among its own. Conversely, when the directions of the East family and the West family mingled in disorder within one home, the energies were thought to collide and go awry. So a home where the gate, the main bedroom, and the kitchen gather neatly into directions of the same family was counted as a good arrangement.
Beneath this theory lie deep the thought of the eight trigrams and of yin-yang and the five phases. The eight directions are not mere points on a map but symbolic seats, each bearing a single trigram. Kan was seen to hold the energy of water, Ri of fire, Jin and Son of wood, Geon and Tae of metal, and Gon and Gan of earth. So to say that those of the same family gather together means as well that mutually harmonious phases join hands. Just as water and wood give life to each other and fire leans on wood, the harmony of directions was unfolded through the principle by which the five phases nourish and oppose one another. The reason eight-house feng shui has carried on for nearly a thousand years is that it was so firmly interlocked with the great trunk of Eastern thought.
Yet in eight-house feng shui there is not only the home. A person, too, is held to have an inborn trigram, called the personal trigram or the natal palace. Reckoning on the basis of the year one was born, one tells whether one belongs to the East-family destiny or the West-family destiny. And when a person's personal trigram and a home's house trigram pair up in the same family, that is, when a person of East-family destiny lives in an East house and a person of West-family destiny in a West house, that home and person were seen to suit each other well. That it does not view person and home apart but examines the harmony between the two together is the fondest passage of eight-house feng shui. The process of finding one's own personal trigram becomes, in itself, a small participatory rite that has you look back on your birth year and direction, turning feng shui from a faraway secret into a familiar knowing that you reckon with your own hands.
In this way, eight-house feng shui is not an abstract declaration of fortune and misfortune but a systematic theory that weighs the three core spots of a home against a person's inborn direction by clear rules. Seen through today's eyes, it can be read as the living wisdom that sought to read the grain of sunlight and wind by direction and to lay out the sleeping place and the kitchen to match. FortuneLeaf's feng shui auspicious-direction feature is a guide that helps you find this very personal trigram with ease. Enter your birth year and it tells you whether you are of East-family or West-family destiny, then guides you to the grain of directions that suit you, offering the pleasure of tracing the old theory for yourself. Most important of all is the heart that receives this not as an absolute command but as a fond guide for looking once more at your own place.