Feng Shui Bagua Map Explained: The Eight Directions and What They Mean

The bagua map (八卦图) is the reference chart behind feng shui direction-reading: it overlays the eight trigrams (八卦, bagua) of the post-heaven arrangement onto the eight compass points, and assigns each direction a trigram, an element, and a life area. When feng shui speaks of a “wealth corner” or a “career direction,” the cell it is pointing at sits on this map. This article lays the map out — where it comes from, the full eight-direction table, and the common ways it is misused.

Where the map comes from: the post-heaven bagua

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The trigrams are laid onto the compass in the post-heaven (后天, houtian) arrangement, not the pre-heaven one. The two arrangements answer different questions: the pre-heaven (先天) order sets the trigrams by their yin-yang structure (乾 south, 坤 north) and is a diagram of how they relate; the post-heaven order sets them by the compass directions they actually govern in applied work (坎 north, 离 south, 震 east, 兑 west). The bagua map used for feng shui direction-reading is the post-heaven arrangement — the pre-heaven order is a structural diagram, not a working compass.

The direction each trigram governs is not a later overlay; it is recorded in the Shuogua (《说卦传》, “Discussion of the Trigrams”), one of the Ten Wings appended to the Yijing. The text walks the eight trigrams around the compass from the opening “the sovereign issues forth from 震” (帝出乎震), and then names each one’s direction in turn — 震 the east, 巽 the southeast, 离 the south, 坤 the southwest, 兑 the west, 乾 the northwest, 坎 the north, 艮 the northeast. That passage is the classical source the table below is built on, which is why the post-heaven direction table is not one school’s preference but the common skeleton every feng shui direction system starts from.

The eight-direction table

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Read clockwise from north, the full correspondence is:

Each cell is a stack of four layers — direction, trigram, element, life area — and the trigram carries a fifth, its natural image: 坎 is water, 艮 is mountain, 震 is thunder, 巽 is wind, 离 is fire, 坤 is earth, 兑 is lake, 乾 is heaven. The “life area” column is the popular eight-mansions (八宅, bazhai) reading, which maps each direction to a concern of household life; it is the layer most feng shui introductions are read for, and also the layer most often over-read.

How the map is used — and misused

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• The “wealth corner” is not one fixed corner. Southeast (巽) is the direction most often named as the wealth corner, and it is the one to check first — but the precise wealth corner of a given dwelling depends on its facing, the occupants’ mingua (命卦, “fate trigram”, computed in the eight mansions method), and, in the flying-stars (玄空飞星) school, on the year. The table gives the popular default, not a coordinate that exempts you from the rest of the reading.
• Pre-heaven and post-heaven are not interchangeable. The bagua map here is the post-heaven arrangement; the pre-heaven order is a structural diagram and does not assign compass directions for layout. Mixing the two is the most common error in simplified feng shui charts.
• The life-area label is not the only reading. The eight-mansions school and the flying-stars school can read the same direction differently, and neither treats the life-area label as a verdict on its own. The label is a starting point, read against the trigram and element above it.
• The Western “bagua map” is a related but different tool. The map popularized in Western feng shui books (the Black Hat Sect, or BTB, bagua map) often orients the eight areas by the entrance door rather than by compass, and usually drops the trigram and element layers, keeping only the “corner = life area” conclusion. It descends from the same post-heaven table above, but understanding the full table — trigram, element, and direction together — is what lets you see what a simplified Western chart has kept and what it has left out.

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