What Is the Bagua?

By Indre Vallorani · 12 May 2026 · 6 min read

Ask two Feng Shui practitioners where your wealth area is. You might get two different rooms. That is not a mistake. It is the result of two different systems — both called Bagua — that map energy in fundamentally different ways. Understanding the difference is the first step to using either one correctly.

The Bagua — eight directions, eight areas of life

Bagua means "eight trigrams" in Chinese. It is an octagonal map that divides space — a home, a room, a city block — into eight sectors. Each sector corresponds to a trigram from the I Ching, a compass direction, a Five Element, and an area of life: Career, Knowledge, Family, Wealth, Fame, Relationships, Creativity, and Helpful People. A ninth sector sits at the centre. The Bagua is the backbone of almost all classical Feng Shui work. The question is not whether to use it — it is which version to use, and how to align it.

The Form School Bagua — door as North

The Form School (also called Black Hat or Black Sect) aligns the Bagua with your front door. The front door is always placed at the bottom of the map — the Career sector. From there, the eight sectors extend inward. Wealth is always at the back left. Relationships at the back right. This system requires no compass. You stand at your front door, face inside, and lay the map over your floor plan. It is simple. It is consistent. It became popular in the West in the 1970s and 1980s, largely through the work of Professor Lin Yun, who adapted Chinese Feng Shui for Western audiences. For this reason, it is the system most people encounter first — in books, in interior design magazines, in popular apps. But it is not the classical system. In the classical tradition, placing Wealth at the back left of every home regardless of compass direction would be considered a fundamental error.

The Compass School Bagua — cardinal directions as North

The Compass School aligns the Bagua with real compass directions. North is North — magnetic North, corrected for local magnetic declination. South is South. The sectors do not move based on where your front door is. They are fixed to the actual orientation of your building. This is the system used in classical Chinese Feng Shui — the tradition practised at the Chinese imperial court, taught by masters in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, and studied by serious Western practitioners. It is harder to apply. It requires knowing the facing direction of your building. It requires a compass reading. It requires understanding magnetic declination — the difference between magnetic North and true North, which varies by location. But it is precise. The same home can have completely different sector maps depending on whether it faces East or West. Two identical apartments in the same building, facing opposite directions, have opposite Bagua maps.

Which system does Sanctuary use?

Indre trained in the classical Compass School tradition. Sanctuary uses compass-aligned Bagua. This is why the app asks for your home address — to determine the facing direction of your building — and why it uses your birth city to calculate magnetic declination. These are not optional details. They are what separates a personalised reading from a generic one. If your wealth sector is at the Southeast and your desk faces North, that is specific information about your specific home. It cannot come from a system that places Wealth at the back left of every house on the planet.

Does the Form School have no value?

That is not what this article is saying. The Form School produces consistent, repeatable results for the people who use it sincerely and understand its principles. It is a coherent system. What it is not is the classical tradition. The confusion arises because both systems use the word Bagua, both use octagonal maps, and both are called Feng Shui. If you are reading a Feng Shui book and the wealth area is always described as the back left of the room — regardless of which way the room faces — you are reading Form School. If the directions change based on compass orientation — you are reading Compass School. Knowing which one you are working with is essential before you move any furniture.