Note: Feng Shui is a kind of science, not a superstition.  Authentic Feng Shui has nothing to do with religion.

Earlier Heaven Bagua and Later Heaven Bagua

Developed from Yijing (Book of Changes), Bagua is one of the foundations in Feng Shui. It is believed that every direction represents a trait, which may or may not match with the characteristics of the person that resides there . In order to improve the situation, you may need to fix something in the corresponding direction. This is the theory of Bagua.

Bagua refers to the diagram that is used to apply the theory of Bagua. The diagram consists of eight small drawings that represent the fundamental principles of reality, seen a range of eight interrelated concepts.

Each drawing consists of three lines, each line either "broken" or "unbroken”, representing yin or yang, respectively. It is also used to represent the directions N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW.  The directions shown by a Bagua is turned 180 degrees of the modern compass. That is, north is the downside, south is the upside, east is on the left and west is on the right.

There are two types of Bagua – Earlier Heaven Bagua and Later Heaven Bagua.  Earlier Heaven Bagua was developed in around 172 BCE (some scholars believe it was before 1,000 BCE); Later Heaven Bagua was a revised version of the Earlier Heaven Bagua. Both versions are used when studying Feng Shui.  The above one is the diagram of a Bagua – an Earlier Heaven Bagua. The Earlier Heaven Bagua is used in burial site Feng Shui.

More or less, Later Heaven Bagua is the same as Earlier Heaven Bagua, except the order of directions (the way of placing the Trigrams) differs. The left hand side one is the diagram of a Later Heaven Bagua, the order of directions is not the same as the Earlier Heaven Bagua.

We use Later Heaven Bagua to determine the characteristics of directions and Earlier Heaven Bagua to put the numbers (trigrams) to it.

For residence, office and commercial buildings, we use the Later Heaven Bagua to fit in the floor plan of a property, with the centre unblocked. Each direction is represented by a trigram (the number in the Bagua), and the nature of the Five Elements.