Casting a Site's Hexagram: Family Lines and Years

A site's hexagram takes the direction the water mouth faces as its outer trigram and the sitting mountain of the lair as its inner trigram. Its lines show which son's line of the family prospers, who carries it on, and for how many years.

Casting the hexagram

Feng shui masters take the direction the water mouth faces as the outer trigram (the upper trigram) and the sitting mountain inside the lair as the inner trigram (the lower trigram); together they make the site's hexagram (本卦). For example, if the water mouth faces out toward Mountain and the incoming dragon comes from Heaven, the site's hexagram is Great Taming (山天大畜).

Setting the facing from the lair shows how many generations of the clan the lair affects, and which of the eldest son's line, the middle son's line and the youngest son's line it reaches. For the three lines, see The Eight Yellow Springs. The example below shows how the count is made.

An example

The site's hexagram is Great Taming. How long will its blessings last? Which son's line will prosper? For how many years? Down to which generation? This has long been a secret many feng shui masters never pass on. It is not hard: the round and square charts give the answer.

Stand at the very center of the lair site and take a reading with the compass. If the sand (the surrounding hills and rocks) at the eldest son's position is full and round, the eldest son's line will prosper.

Then look at what the round chart shows. Say it is Pushing Upward (地风升), figure ䷭: four yin lines and two yang, 42 years in all. Its upper trigram, Earth, is the mother; its lower trigram, Wind, is the eldest daughter. So:

• The wife in the eldest son's line will surely succeed in business.
• At the height of her career she will have a grown daughter, her eldest, able enough to build on her mother's business; so the eldest daughter will surely take it over.

The years follow the lines:

• The first line is yin and governs 6 years.
• The second and third lines are yang and together govern 18 years, so the 18 years after those first six will surely bring a swift rise to high rank.
• After the mother retires, the eldest daughter takes over, and with Earth's constancy, the same from start to finish, she will surely hold the family business for another 18 years: the top three yin lines.

Now look at Great Power (雷天大壮), which matches Pushing Upward on the square chart. Great Power carries the image of adding to Pushing Upward: Thunder is the eldest son, and Heaven the husband and father. Read together with the round chart, the eldest daughter will surely marry a distinguished husband and have a son, and father and son will help the mother's business; its strength is then established.

All this can already be known when the dead are laid in the grave, or when the foundations of a house site are laid. For laying the dead in a grave site, see Ancestral Graves.

The other hexagrams

Every other hexagram is worked out in the same way.

Source: The Way of the Earth's Veins (天纪：地脉道)