Every Feng Shui term you'll see on this site, explained in plain English -- no prior knowledge assumed.
Pronounced "fung-shway." A centuries-old Chinese practice for reading how a building's shape, layout, and orientation interact with the people living in it. "Feng Shui" literally translates to "wind-water" -- the idea that a home sits inside a flow of natural forces the same way it sits inside actual wind and water, and that arranging a home thoughtfully within that flow matters.
Pronounced "chee." The life energy or vital force Feng Shui treats as flowing through a home the way air or water does -- gathering in some spots, rushing through others, and getting blocked in others still. Most of what Feng Shui actually recommends is really about helping qi gather and circulate gently, rather than rushing straight through a space or stagnating in a corner.
Feng Shui's two-word scale for "supportive" vs. "less supportive." An inauspicious direction or placement isn't a curse or a guaranteed problem -- it's closer to "works against you a little," the way a headwind slows you down without stopping you.
The older of Feng Shui's two major traditions, focused on the physical shape of a site itself -- nearby water, hills, roads, and the building's own shape. FengShuiIQ's free and Expanded ProperQi™ Score are built on Form School principles applied to real map data.
The other major tradition, focused on precise compass directions and how they interact with a specific person (via their Kua number) or a specific point in time (via systems like Flying Star). ProperQi™ Match, the Bagua overlay, Tai Sui/Sui Po, and Flying Star are all Compass School methods.
A classical Compass School method that sorts everyone into one of eight personal directions of best and worst fit, based on a number calculated from their birth year and sex. It's the system behind ProperQi™ Match's per-person readings and the Expanded tier's Kua Direction Compatibility factor.
A number from 1 to 9 (skipping 5, which redirects to 2 or 8 -- see below) calculated from your birth year and sex. It's the starting point for your entire Eight Mansions reading -- everything else in this section is derived from it.
An edge case in the Kua number formula: the math itself can produce a "5," which isn't a usable Eight Mansions number on its own. Classical sources redirect it to Kua 2 for men and Kua 8 for women -- an old convention, applied here exactly as classical sources describe it.
Every Kua number belongs to one of two groups, and each group shares the same four supportive and four less-supportive directions. Two people in opposite groups can get genuinely different readings for the exact same room -- that's expected, not a bug (see "Household Read" below).
Your single strongest direction -- the best-fit reading in your entire Eight Mansions chart, worth +4 on the classical −4-to-+4 point scale FengShuiIQ uses.
One of your four supportive directions, classically associated with health.
One of your four supportive directions, classically associated with relationships.
One of your four supportive directions, classically associated with stability and personal growth -- the mildest of the four supportive readings.
One of your four less-supportive directions -- the mildest of the four, classically associated with minor setbacks rather than anything serious.
One of your four less-supportive directions, classically associated with irritability or minor conflict.
One of your four less-supportive directions, classically associated with obstacles or arguments -- more significant than Ho Hai or Wu Kwei, but not the most severe.
Your single most challenging direction -- the mirror image of Sheng Chi, worth −4 on the same point scale. Every less-supportive direction, including this one, comes with a specific practical adjustment on a ProperQi™ Match report -- never left as just bad news.
A classical rule that three rooms matter more than any other when reading a home against a person's directions: the front door, the stove/kitchen, and the bedroom. ProperQi™ Match's scoring weights reflect this -- Entrance and Bedroom each carry 30% of your score, Kitchen carries 20%.
An 8-sided (plus center) map of a home's overall footprint, where each of the 8 outer sectors corresponds to a different life area -- wealth, relationships, career, and so on. FengShuiIQ divides a home's footprint into a 3-by-3 grid using true compass directions to check how completely each sector is actually built out.
What it's called when a home's footprint doesn't substantially fill one of the Bagua's 8 outer sectors -- not a fixed flaw, just something worth being aware of for that sector's life area. Shown on a ProperQi™ Match report as an advisory note, separate from your percentage score.
The compass direction a home's main entrance opens toward -- one of the two key inputs (along with your Kua number) for reading which of your eight directions each room falls into.
The exact opposite of a home's facing direction -- if a home faces south, it sits north. Used together with facing direction in Flying Star and Tai Sui/Sui Po readings.
A structural feature read as sending disruptive energy toward a specific spot -- classically, things like a sharp exterior corner pointed at a home, or (as ProperQi™ Match checks for) doors that line up straight through a home so energy rushes through instead of settling. Not the same thing as the road-based "Poison Arrows" factor on the Expanded ProperQi™ Score, which checks whether a dead-end street is aimed at the property from outside.
ProperQi™ Match's check for whether three or more of a home's doors -- front, interior, and back -- line up substantially straight through the house. When they do, it's classically read as chi entering and exiting too quickly to gather, usually addressed with a screen, plant, or furniture that softly breaks the sightline.
Form School's classical "armchair" or command position, applied to an entire site rather than one room: elevation rises behind a property and opens up in front, read as the most secure, supported siting. This is exactly what FengShuiIQ's free Terrain factor checks for using real elevation data.
Short for Black Sect Tantric Buddhist Form School -- the specific tradition behind the $29 Floor Plan ProperQi™ Score. Unlike the whole-home Bagua used on ProperQi™ Match (oriented to true compass directions -- see "Bagua" above), BTB orients its nine-zone grid to your floor plan's own front-door wall, no compass reading needed. It's Form School, not Compass School (see both above), and reads a floor plan's fixed room layout rather than any one person's directions.
BTB's term for the front door -- the point energy is read as entering the home through, and the anchor the entire nine-zone grid is oriented around. Confirming which wall this is on is Step 2 of the Floor Plan ProperQi™ Score.
The row of three zones nearest the front door -- Knowledge, Career, and Helpful People, standing in the doorway left to right. Whichever one your front door actually opens into is called "your gate," the starting point the rest of BTB's nine-zone grid is built out from.
The ninth, middle zone of the BTB grid -- not one of the eight classical trigram directions, but a center zone that comes from an older diagram called the Lo Shu (see "Bagua" above). Read as the "heart" of the home.
Another name for one of the nine zones in a Bagua-style grid -- "gua" and "station" are just two traditional words for the same square.
A bed or desk placed so you can see the room's door without being directly in line with it, ideally with a solid wall at your back. Classically read as the most secure, restful placement for that piece of furniture.
A simple, traditional adjustment -- a mirror, plant, light, or moved piece of furniture -- suggested to address something a reading flags, like a missing area or a piercing-heart door alignment. Always shown as an optional next step, never as mandatory.
BTB's version of a Bagua imbalance, read room-rectangle by room-rectangle rather than across a whole home's footprint (compare "Missing corner" above, the whole-home version used on ProperQi™ Match). An extension is a bump-out beyond the main rectangle that strengthens whichever zone it falls in; a missing area is a corner carved out of the rectangle, leaving that zone under-represented.
BTB's term for what happens when an interior or back door lines up straight through from the front door -- chi is read as rushing through the home instead of settling. Same underlying idea as "Door flow" above, just BTB's own name for it.
For an L-shaped home or one with multiple wings, the single primary rectangle the BTB grid is pinned to and scored against -- toggle to "Whole home" instead to have the grid cover every wing at once.
The one bedroom BTB's reading treats as most significant, alongside the front door and kitchen (see "San Yao" above for the $49 tier's version of this same three-room emphasis). Confirming which bed is the primary one is part of fine-tuning a floor plan.
The five grade names a Floor Plan ProperQi™ Score can land on, low to high -- Sheng Qi ("flourishing energy") is the top grade. Same underlying 0-100 point scale as every other ProperQi™ tier, just this tier's own set of names for the bands.
The top grade on the Floor Plan ProperQi™ Score's Qi-flow ladder (see above) -- "flourishing energy," for scores of 90 and up, meaning a layout that already channels abundant, life-giving qi and aligns with many Form-School basics. Not the same as "Sheng Chi" (see Eight Mansions Directions above) -- same root idea, but a different tradition (Form School vs. Compass School), a different spelling, and a different reading: Sheng Qi grades a floor plan's own layout, Sheng Chi is a specific resident's single strongest personal direction.
A Compass School system that reads a home's energy as changing over time, based on when it was built and which way it faces -- distinct from Eight Mansions, which is fixed to a person rather than a point in time.
A 20-year era a home's construction year falls into, each with its own general element. This reading only needs a construction year (or estimate) and is always shown on a ProperQi™ Match report.
A fuller 9-room Flying Star reading tied to a home's specific facing direction, on top of its construction period. Needs an actual compass reading (not just an estimate) to compute, and ships labeled "Preview -- pending verification" while one classical edge case (kong wang, below) is still being checked against a practitioner's review.
The two numbers a natal Flying Star chart assigns to each room -- Water Star reads toward wealth and opportunity, Mountain Star reads toward health and relationships. Shown side by side on a ProperQi™ Match report's Geometry table.
A classical concept describing when a home's facing sits close enough to a boundary line between two directions that the Flying Star reading becomes genuinely ambiguous. This is the specific open question keeping the natal chart labeled "Preview" on this site.
A separate, simpler Flying Star reading that changes every calendar year regardless of when a home was built -- shown alongside the (fixed) natal chart on a ProperQi™ Match report so both time-based systems are visible for the same room, side by side.
The compass direction associated with the current year in classical Compass School practice -- resets every January 1st and applies to the whole household equally, unlike your personal Eight Mansions directions.
The direction directly opposite Tai Sui for the current year. Shown together on a ProperQi™ Match report's "This Year's Outlook" section -- informational only, and doesn't change your percentage score.
The free, unlimited score for any U.S. address -- seven Form School site factors (water, green space, hazards, road exposure, terrain, direction, schools) plus a FEMA flood-zone check. Not tied to any one person.
A $4.99 add-on to the free score for one address, going deeper on the same site with seven more factors -- including Kua Direction Compatibility, the one personal (not site-only) factor in this tier.
A $29 one-time purchase that scores one home's interior layout from a floor-plan image -- room shapes, missing corners, and similar interior-specific reads. Re-edits to the same plan are free forever.
The $49 tier built around the people living in a home rather than the site alone -- a full Eight Mansions reading per resident, Flying Star, a household-conflict check, and (with a saved floor plan) room-by-room matching.
A separate, older tradition scored alongside (not folded into) the ProperQi™ Score -- Chinese numerological associations with house numbers, like favoring 8 and avoiding 4.
See the full methodology for how each factor is actually calculated, or the FAQ for common questions about pricing, accuracy, and how the score works.