One of the most crucial methods in compass school Feng Shui is the 24 mountain formula – this is a very precise method of Feng Shui where you make use of the 24 compass sub directions when determining the sitting and facing direction of your home and will also allow you to determine a great deal for your home or office. The sub directions of the 24 mountains are seen in a Chinese Luo Pan Compass and are displayed in one of the rings around the central compass; each sub direction is divided into a 15-degree segment and all of the segments add up to 360 degrees hence why we have 24 mountains.
The sub directions of the 360 degrees are the basis of Eight mansions and Flying Star; they are also the basis of the Water Dragon formulas. Nowadays, the 24 mountain less calculation and time spent working everything out as you can buy layover charts for property floor plans and in our Academy of Feng Shui Software, the formula is all built in to the software and everything is worked out instantly which makes life a lot easier than when a Feng Shui Master would have to use a Luo Pan to calculate this.
The first thing you will need to do when learning how to use the 24 mountain formula is invest in a good quality compass similar to the one in the picture. We sell a good quality compass that is highly accurate and fully calibrated with thousands of pounds worth of compasses to give you 100% accurate readings but you can also pick a compass up at a local camping store.
The reason that a good quality compass is so important is because the compass direction helps determine the buildings facing directions.
A lot of old books will refer to the 24 mountains by their specific name which can get very confusing if you are trying to remember names like Ren, Ding, Wu etc. You may notice that the names of the 24 mountains are also the names of trigrams, earthly branches and heavenly stems.
Below is a reference chart that you can save and print for when you are applying the 24 mountains in Feng Shui.
24 Mountains Compass
24 Mountains is one of the most important and widely used rings on the Chinese Feng Shui Luo Pan. It comprises the eight major compass directions each of which is sub-divided into three. These 24 directions are the basis of Flying Stars, Water Dragon formulas, Bagua theory and the Eight Mansions method of Feng Shui analysis.
Our reliable, convenient and carry-along compass complete with 24 mountains ring is ideal for those of you looking to identify auspicious and inauspicious directions in your home and workplace. For those important meetings a subtle glance at the compass can let you know the best way to face to help achieve positive results based on your Gua number.
24 Mountains
Possessing an accurate compass is important because all Feng Shui formulas categorize buildings according to their facing and sitting directions and the 24 mountains are an essential component for correct analysis. To use formula Feng Shui effectively and benefit from the charts derived from the formulations, it is essential to know how to identify and take advantage of the 24 directions. You may find for example your house facing is different from your main door facing.
The Flow of Chi
Feng Shui translates as wind and water. Chi enters a property from the exterior and the characteristics of that Chi (positive or negative), together with the way it enters, moves through, and leaves a building offers important clues as to the quality of life residents can expect. Feng Shui expertise enables a practitioner to study the quality and strength of Chi flow and how it affects a building and its occupants. Taking accurate directions is an important facet of practicing Feng Shui. Guessing directions will do more harm than good as activating a wrong sector may cause a wide variety of negative outcomes. Always use a compass to help pinpoint the good and avoid the not so good based on what it is you want to achieve.
Basic Compass Directions
Primary Directions are North, South, East and West. These are the four directions of the celestial guardians; dragon, tiger, tortoise and phoenix. Also known as the four heavenly kings they can protect you from those who would lead you astray and get you into trouble. When positive they can help protect your property from negative influences. You want to see dragon (land/buildings) higher and to the left at the front of a property, tiger (land/buildings) lower and to the right, turtle (high land/buildings/trees) behind for support and phoenix an open space in front.
Secondary Directions are Southwest, Northeast, Southeast and Northwest. These four directions signify father (northwest), mother (southwest), youngest son (northeast) and eldest daughter (southeast). When any of these sectors are auspicious it can have a positive influence on the family member concerned. If any of these sectors are negatively affected by external or internal afflictions it can have a detrimental effect on the family member concerned causing among other things ill health and/or loss of wealth.
Feng Shui Directions: The 24 Mountains
The Compass School of Classical Feng Shui is based on the concept that each of the eight feng shui directions hold a different type of Qi. Factors including astrology and numerology are added around this central premise. Let us understand how. You are aware that there are four cardinal and four sub-cardinal directions. The four cardinal directions are North, South, East, and West. The four sub-cardinal directions are Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest. The Eight Trigrams of Classical Feng Shui are correlated to each of these eight directions.
These Eight Trigrams along with their particular directions, also correspond to a particular Gua number. They also have particular elements associated with them. Each of these elements carry a particular form of energy with them. Hence, we can safely conclude that each of the eight directions also foster different types of Qi.
In Classical Feng Shui, each of the eight fundamental directions are further divided into 3 sub-directions. This makes a total of 24 feng shui directions, also known as The 24 Mountains of Classical Feng Shui. A compass measures 0 to 360 degrees. Hence, each trigram constitutes 45 degrees of the compass. Each trigram, or let’s say each fundamental direction, is subdivided into 3 equal parts of 15 degrees each. It is this precision and detailing involved in Classical Feng Shui, that makes it accurate and reliable. It discourages intuitive insights on one hand, and relies on computation, observation, and experimentation on the other.
The 24 Mountains of Classical Feng Shui have particular degrees and each of them have a different Chinese name. Diagrammatically, The 24 Mountains can be represented as follows:
The table shows the 24 Feng Shui directions along with their corresponding degrees. This table will help you locate your actual facing and sitting direction. All you need is a compass. You can either buy a compass or download it from the app store into your smartphone. There are plenty of apps and their readings are fairly accurate.
24 Mountains, Trigram, Yin and Yang [Master Class 18]
Last week we had an overview of the constitution of the full Flying Star Map, which comprises of the Mountain Star, Facing (Water) Star, and the Period (Yun) Star. In particular, I taught you how to find out the Period Stars. This week, I’ll equip you with the necessary knowledge to find out the Mountain Stars and Facing Stars. To do this, we need to have the 24 Mountains concept in mind. It is the way we Feng Shui masters use the measure the orientation of a house. Most of you learned the four directions, i.e. North, East, South, and West when you were very young. When you grew older, you would learn the other four directions in between, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest. These eight directions are pretty enough in daily life to differentiate in different directions. Now I’m telling you that there are 24 directions according to Chinese Feng Shui theories, that we called the 24 Mountains. If you divide 360 degrees into 24 portions, each will be merely 15 degrees. The narrow width of each portion means that there is not much toleration for error. (And in fact, if you study Feng Shui at an advanced level, you will know that each 15-degree portion is further divided into 3 sub-portions, in a 3-9-3 degrees manner. Isn’t it crazy? In a way, yes, but such complicated calculation could also be seen as a signal of how advanced Feng Shui is. For now, we’ll just focus on the 24 Mountains.
24 Mountains: Using Compass to Find Out
There are eight directions and in each direction there are three smaller portions. Each portion is called a Mountain, three portions in each of the eight directions, i.e. 3 x 8 = 24 Mountains. Here I list out the degrees of all 24 Mountains. North
- Ren (壬) – 337.6 to 352.5
- Zi (子) – 352.6 to 7.5
- Gui (癸) – 7.6 to 22.5
Northeast
- Chou (丑) – 22.6 to 37.5
- Gen (艮) – 37.6 to 52.5
- Yin (寅) – 52.6 to 67.5
East
- Jia (甲) – 67.6 to 82.5
- Mao (卯) – 82.6 to 97.5
- Yi (乙) – 97.6 to 112.5
Southeast
- Chen (辰) – 112.6 to 127.5
- Xun (巽) – 127.6 to 142.5
- Si (巳) – 142.6 to 157.5
South
- Bing (丙) – 157.6 to 172.5
- Wu (午) – 172.6 to 187.5
- Ding (丁) – 187.6 to 202.5
Southwest
- Wei (未) – 202.6 to 217.5
- Kun (坤) – 217. to 232.5
- Shen (申) – 232.6 to 247.5
West
- Geng (庚) – 247.6 to 262.5
- You (酉) – 262.6 to 277.5
- Xin (辛) – 277.6 to 292.5
Northwest
- Xu (戌) – 292.6 to 307.5
- Qian (乾) – 307.6 to 322.5
- Hai (亥) – 322.6 to 337.5
If we write down the 24 mountains around the circumvent of a compass, you would get something like this:
Image Courtesy: Ray Langley (via this site) The best tool to measure a house’s orientation is certainly a Chinese Feng Shui compass, which usually looks like the following photo. The advantage of using Feng Shui compass is that the 24 Mountains are already printed around the compass, so you don’t need to refer to the above list. There is another advantage that I’ll cover later when we talk about assigning the Stars in ascending or descending order. If you want to buy a Feng Shui compass, you can easily get one at an affordable price from Amazon. Just click this link to search for one you like. But if you do not have a Feng Shui compass, you still could an ordinary compass to do Feng Shui. Simply refer to the above list after you measured the directions.
Sitting and Facing Directions
We have learnt a bit about finding out the sitting (backing) direction and facing direction of a house. Let’s re-cap and see how we could do it for finding out which of the 24 Mountains the house belongs to. Firstly, you need to find the center point of the house. It is usually the point where the diagonal lines intersect if the house is a simple square or rectangle. The image below shows the center points of common shapes of houses. But usually modern houses would not be such regular, the shapes of modern houses usually look like the combination of a few rectangles, sometimes with triangles and circles as well. In these cases, we find out the center points by cutting out small projections and filling up small recessions, so that the overall shapes become more regular. Then, we measure the directions when standing in the center point of the house. The direction where the entrance door locates is the facing direction. For example, if the entrance door is in the Zi (子) direction, we call this house facing Zi. We call this the Facing Direction. In Chinese Feng Shui we do not only use the facing direction to name a house, we also use the direction where the house “backs”. How to find out the backing direction? Easy. Just find out the direction opposite to the facing direction on the compass. So if the facing direction is Zi, the backing direction must be Wu (午). We call the backing direction as the Mountain direction. This is a hard rule, we always use the opposite of the Facing Direction as the Mountain Direction, and vice versa. When Feng Shui masters talk to each other, they 100% use this system of nomenclature, there is no exception. We always combine the Facing and Mountain Directions and say a house is Wu Mountain Zi Facing (午山子向). The direct translation is grammatically wrong, but let’s just live with it for now. Knowing the Mountain and Facing directions are important because we need these two directions to find out the Mountain and Facing Flying Stars in the nine boxes of the Flying Star Map.