Over the centuries, different approaches to Feng Shui have emerged, each emphasizing a particular way of reading the interaction between people and place. These approaches are often called schools. While they share the same philosophical roots, they offer different lenses of interpretation — from the visible forms of mountains and buildings, to the unseen patterns of energy shaped by direction and time. In practice, most consultants blend insights from several schools to arrive at a complete picture of a space.
- Form School: The oldest school of Feng Shui, concerned with the natural environment and the physical shapes that surround us. It observes how mountains, rivers, roads, and neighboring structures gather, channel, or repel Qi. Indoors, Form School studies the flow of space — the placement of doors, windows, corridors, and furniture. Its maxim is simple: “Qi follows form.” A well-shaped environment will naturally encourage Qi to settle, circulate, and nourish.
- Eight Mansions (Ba Zhai): A system that divides a home into eight sectors based on compass orientation and matches these with a person’s date of birth. It identifies favorable directions (for health, relationships, work) and unfavorable ones (linked to obstacles or depletion). Eight Mansions is straightforward and widely practiced, useful for aligning beds, desks, and entrances with supportive directions for the residents.
- Xuan Kong Flying Stars: The most sophisticated and time-sensitive school of Feng Shui. Rather than being fixed, its calculations reveal how Qi moves with time, shifting year by year, month by month, day by day and even every two hours. Using the Lo Shu magic square, Flying Stars assigns numerical “stars” — each linked to an element and life aspect — into the nine palaces of a building. Each house has a natal chart, determined by its period of construction and its facing direction, which describes its underlying potential. Over this, annual and monthly stars “fly in,” bringing temporary influences that can either support or disturb. It is in this dynamic interplay of space and time that Flying Stars earns its reputation as a living art, constantly adapting to the cycles of change.
These schools are not mutually exclusive. A consultant might first study the forms of the landscape and the layout of the dwelling, then refine their reading with Eight Mansions for personal alignment, and finally use Flying Stars to adjust for the shifting energies of the present period. Together, they form a layered method of observation — from the solid foundation of land and form, to the personal resonance of directions, and finally to the subtle dance of time itself.
