Let’s run through some of the steps to determine the geometric center for simple shapes, and for more complicated floor plans.
Once that established, we will give considerations more with regard to ‘center of a house’, because, by establishing the geometric center of a built structure, we were in itself not committing a ‘Feng Shui’ act.
The technique to establish the geometric center in Feng Shui is called Lì Jí – 立極.
This process is no different were you a practitioner of Black Hat Tantric Buddhist Sect (BTB) Feng Shui, Xuan Kong Flying Star Feng Shui 風水飛星派, or any of the other traditional systems for house divination.
Since we are in the field of Feng Shui, it cannot be stressed enough, that geometric center and energetic center are not synonymous.
In fact, from a perspective of Fei Xing Feng Shui, there can be not a central space in Luoshu to host 9 Stars.
Here is a short description to guide you.
In determining the center of an octagon, a square, a rectangle, we simply connect the extremities of these structures by using imaginary lines, while these lines will remain within the structure itself. The center will be where these lines cross. For a triangle, we cut it into six slices.
For circles and oval structures, we may extend the imaginary lines to somewhat outside the structure until we reach an imaginary square or rectangle. Again, where these lines cross we will locate the center of the object.
It becomes different if then we need to find the center for irregular or asymmetrical structures, where we may not just need to extend the lines outside the structure, but here we may need to compensate.
For an L-shape, we first divide the structure into two subsectors after which we determine the center of each one of these shapes. Then we interconnect the centers of these subsectors and we will find the center of the entire structure somewhere along this line, proportionally more towards the bigger of the two shapes.
Somewhat more sophisticated may be to draw two sketches of the same floor plan (I and II) and divide each one of floor plans into two separate surfaces.
We obtain a center for I somewhere on the line A-B. We arrive to a center for II somewhere on the line C-D.
Then we adjoin both imaginary lines (A-B and C-D) (III) and we find the center at the crossing of these lines (IV).
Projecting your Flying Star chart
Once you found the center of the structure, determine the exact directions by establishing the North-South axis.
Use magnetic directions (Magnetic North versus True North), established always from a compass reading taken outside.
Superimpose the Flying Star chart over the floor plan, as you align it according to the actual magnetic directions.
By the same token you can determine the center for each of the building’s floor and each individual room in your house. The same Flying Star chart that applies to your house, will – under normal conditions – apply for all floors and all individual rooms proportionally so (as opposed to establishing Flying Star chart for the house, then each interior room ‘its own’ Flying Star chart, for example where compass orientation would be taken at the door for each individual room).
- We do not consider the neighbor’s unit to belong to our Flying Star chart.
- To proportion that our house is rectangular or irregularly shaped, certain directions may dominate. For example, as here the Trigrams for East and West directions will dominate.
Attached buildings
Do we include a garage in our Lì Jí assessments? If there is no door or passage through to connect the house and the garage, we do not consider the garage.
In fact, once not the garage were connected to the house through an interior door, it will have its entry way, for which you just consider it an autonomous structure, so you may give it a Flying Star chart of its own.
Do we include a balcony in our Lì Jí assessment? We do not include a balcony in our assessment of a building’s center, also not if the balcony is only roofed. Only when the balcony is and roofed and completely closed off at the front (outside partition) may we consider to include it in our measurements.
Important note on the topic of center
We need to distinguish between geometric center and Qi center. Energy may not assemble to flow to where the geometric center comes out to be.
Energy chooses the path of least resistance, while it may rise on warmer temperatures, it may fall with cooler temperatures, or the energy may favor a left bound path as it enters the house or it may go straight ahead.
Therefore, you’ll end up ‘nowhere’ if you were to expect symbiosis between where geometric center is and where you’d expect energy to eventually gather.
It is not just a matter of, how do I sketch my Flying Star chart: as a pie shape or as a 9 square grid.
The matter becomes much more ‘ticklish’, as you will see that, whomever were to then attribute m2 of floor space to the center of a house for purpose of house divination, may easily also willingly or unwillingly adhere psychological or emotional connotation to such a perceived energetic center, so that you will encounter a lot of associations with regard to such a center of the house in Feng Shui, but which eventually comes as little more than a dot:
Center of the house is Dao.
Center of the house is your Karma.
Center of the house is Tai Ji.
Center of the house is where Yin and Yang meet.
Center of the house connects ‘everything’.
Center of the house is where energy originates.
Center of the house will energize you.
Center of the house is the Heart of your house.
Center of the house needs to be treated lovingly.
Center of the house will affect other areas of the house.
Center of the house is altogether positive or negative.
Center of the house has a certain strength (energy).
Center of the house is the point of balance and harmony.
Center of the house brings personal transformation.
Center of the house connects to your health.
Center of the house associates with Wuxing Earth.
Center of the house associates with stability.
Qi and energy are not synonymous. If Qi is the bigger bucket, and energy is the smaller bucket, we can make a smaller bucket to fit into a bigger bucket, but it could not be done the other way around.
Qi looks for a reference point, energy can be confined, transported and distributed.
Now that in fact this said, that Qi cannot be confined, Qi cannot be compartmentalized. This has consequences for your at all 9 Stars and Luoshu practice, as 9 Stars are atmospheric – omnipresent -, and can’t be limited to ‘directions’.
It has however been convention in the field of 9 Stars and Luoshu applications, to assign it directions to Luoshu Palaces, until, if a certain annual Star were to appear in Qian Palace, it is regarded this Star as to ‘head in’ from out of Northwest direction.
Once for purpose of 9 Ki Divination you sit with your annual- and monthly Luoshu to find it your Star in ‘such and such’ Luoshu Palace, while your Star were visited by Star 4 for document, such document would reach you from out of anywhere.
This is because, you are the ‘central’ point of reference.
If you were to ask energy “can you go to where the geometric center is?”, energy would be at a loss as to what at all you were talking about.
Moreover, 9 Stars will not behave in any rigid way as would be perhaps suggested by the demarcation lines in Luoshu.
So, whenever you determine the center, certainly, try do this part correctly and minutely, but once you found it, and while auditing the house, don’t be too schizophrenic about your applications, because mostly, your audit does not depend on degrees of arc.
We are practitioners of the Qi Distribution School. This means we are only interested in obtaining the center of a built structure for geometric reasons.
Where we had it established the center of our physical structure may not at all be where we may then find energy to collect.
How and where energy collects, we need to assess by yet observing interior pathways for Qi.
Qi travels on the back of the magnetic directions, outside-in, whilst very much ‘circumferential’ so to say. Wherever you are, as said: you become the central point of reference.
If you are a practitioner of Flying Star Feng Shui, you’ll sketch it a Flying Star chart, which would indeed seem to accommodate Mountain Star, Time Star and Water Star in what would seem a central unit in your Flying Star chart, now also called Heaven’s Heart – Tian Xin 天心.
Before long, geometric center will be mistaken for any m2 of floor space, where the Feng Shui practitioner would then go to install Feng Shui ‘cures’. Many practitioners presume that energy would gather at the center of a house.
However, where geometric center occurs, may not be where energy moves, at all.
The geometric center comes as actually no more than a dot.
Many – in noting the Mountain Star, Time Star and Water Star at Heaven’s Heart in a Flying Star chart -, will assign a proportionate m2 of floor space somewhere around the geometric center of the building to note tendencies among Stars ‘there’, then if so deemed necessary ‘remedy’ Stars at the center of the house by means of Feng Shui ‘cures’.
Why then do we see 3 Stars at Heaven’s Heart?
Let’s presume that the house is built in Feng Shui Period 8 (2004-2024), and that it is Facing South.
- Period Star 8 is the Qi to descend from heaven, to take in no direction, as it will be taken to the ‘center’ of our Flying Star chart. It then assigns duty to the other Time Stars (x) into the eight magnetic directions to form the Period chart.
- Time Star 3 at the Facing Palace will be taken to the center of our Flying Star chart, to instigate the Water Dragon chart (y).
- Time Star 4 at the Sitting Palace will be taken to the center, to instigate the Mountain Dragon chart (z).
Therefore, it’s not so much as where Stars at the center were to then pull your attention to ‘a’ center, where then you may locate ‘Stars’, as much as it is just to signify that:
- We take the current Time Star to the center of a Flying Star chart, to signify that we will thereafter not be able to locate this Time Star anywhere in the magnetic directions (x).
- We take the Facing Star to the ‘center’ of a Flying Star chart, to instigate the Water Dragon chart, then this Star not to appear in the Water Dragon chart, so that thereafter we may not locate this Water Dragon (y).
- We take the Sitting Star to the ‘center’ of a Flying Star chart, to instigate the Mountain Dragon chart, then this Star not to appear in the Mountain Dragon chart, so that thereafter we may not locate this Mountain Dragon (z) .
Therefore, any Star to be at all shown in a center, has as its ‘message’, that it is exactly this Star that we wouldn’t locate anywhere in the magnetic directions.
What is not there, cannot be manipulated, ‘cured’ or ‘remedied’.
If you saw reason to adjust the Mountain Star – now to appear at the ‘center’ -, you would take your adjustment to where this Mountain Star had originated, which is the Time Star at the Sitting Palace, here Period Star 3 in the South Facing Palace. If you saw reason to adjust the Water Star at the ‘center’, you would take your adjustment to where this Water Star had originated, which is the Time Star at the Facing Palace, here Period Star 4 in the North Sitting Palace.
If still you thought to ‘adjust’ the central area in your house – for example as you took physical objects for their noted Wuxing influence -, you may do so for psychological reasons.
We need to distinguish such terms as Luoshu 洛書, Bagua 八卦 or Magic Square.
Luoshu is to more faithfully – whilst figuratively – depict only 8 magnetic directions of 45 degrees each, it has no central unit. Any Magic Square of odd order hosts a central unit to accommodate for quantitative information, such as numbers or letters.
Luoshu is Magic Square in nothing,
Magic Square is Luoshu in Nothing.
A central unit at Luoshu is used only, as it will be more convenient if we were to communicate a Flying Star chart in front of class, among peers or with clients.
Before we can correctly position it our Flying Star chart over our floor plan, we need to know where to have its center point coincide with the built structure’s geometric center. In order to doing so, we need first establish the geometric center of our built structure.
To establish a central ‘dot’ at the geometric center, therefore, was to be able to evenly distribute our Stars over a floor plan, then not to ‘open’ up this dot as if it were a Lotus flower, until it covered a central unit of m2 floor space that we thought was proportionate to the whole building, then assign ‘Feng Shui duty’.
