What does Flying Star need to know?

Two things about the building and nothing about you: the year it was completed or substantially rebuilt, which sets its period, and the direction it faces, measured as a bearing rather than as a rough compass point. Eight Mansions is the school that uses your birth details; Flying Star reads the building itself.

Which period are we in?

Period 9, which runs from Li Chun 2024 to Li Chun 2044. Period 8 ran from 2004 to 2024. A building keeps the period it was built in; the current period only changes which star counts as timely, which is why a chart drawn in 2020 was read differently from the same chart in 2026.

How accurate does the facing bearing need to be?

More accurate than most people expect. The compass is divided into twenty-four mountains of fifteen degrees each, so two or three degrees can change which mountain you are in, and a bearing near the boundary between two of the eight sectors changes the entire chart rather than one number in it. Take the reading in several places along the facing wall, away from steel and wiring.

What is the 5 Yellow?

The star read as the most disruptive in the system. It moves to a different sector each year, and the standard advice, which practitioners of every school agree on, is to avoid renovation, drilling or digging in that sector until the year turns at Li Chun. It is the clearest example of how this school works: specific, dated, and expiring.

Do you compute replacement charts?

No. Replacement charts (替卦) apply when a facing sits away from the centre of its mountain, and the schools disagree about both the threshold that triggers them and the substitution table to use. Where your bearing is far enough from the mountain centre for the question to arise, this says so and draws the ordinary chart, rather than picking one lineage's answer and presenting it as the answer.

Flying Star chart for a building

This is the school of feng shui that reads the building rather than the person.

A house floor plan with a 3 × 3 grid of palaces laid over it, small digits in each, a luopan needle at the front door

玄空飛星 · Xuan Kong

How a Flying Star chart works

Give it the year the place was finished and the direction it faces, and it lays nine numbers across nine sectors, then flies a second set for this year and a third for this month over the top. That is what makes its advice expire, and it is the reason a consultant expects to come back.

What you get

What you’ll need: The year the building was completed and the compass bearing its front faces.
What you’ll get: The period chart for a building from its completion year and facing bearing, with the annual and monthly stars and this year's 5 Yellow.

Two things we had to decide, said out loud

Period 9 is current. It began at Li Chun 2024 and runs to Li Chun 2044, and Period 8 before it ran 2004 to 2024. That matters because “timely” moved: the 8 that every feng shui column told you to activate for twenty years retired in 2024, and the 9 took over. Your building keeps the period it was built in. Only the question of which star is in season changes.

Replacement charts are not computed. When a facing lies away from the centre of its mountain, a large part of the school swaps in different numbers before flying them, and calls the result a 替卦. The schools disagree on how far off centre triggers it, on the substitution table, and therefore on the chart. There is no neutral answer to average towards. So when your bearing lands in that territory this says so, draws the ordinary chart, and tells you a practitioner in one of those lineages would hand you a different one. That is less satisfying than a number and it is the only fair thing to do with a real disagreement.

Period: Twenty-year blocks turning at Li Chun (立春), read in China Standard Time. Period 8 ran 2004 to 2024; Period 9 runs 2024 to 2044
Replacement stars: Not computed. The 替卦 replacement charts apply when a facing lies away from the centre of its mountain, and the schools disagree on both the threshold and the substitution table, so a bearing near a boundary is flagged and left rather than resolved to one lineage's answer
The star 5: The star 5 has no trigram, so its flight direction follows the pattern odd stars use: yang, yin, yin across the three mountains. Verified against published Period 9 charts where 5 sits in the facing or sitting palace
Which north: Bearings are magnetic, the way a luopan reads them. If you took yours from a phone compass set to true north, subtract your local declination before entering it
Not computed: The 城門訣 city gate, 七星打劫 the seven-star robbery, and any judgement about your specific rooms, all of which need the building rather than a bearing
Does it work: There is no evidence that a building's completion year and facing angle affect the health or the money of the people inside it. This draws the chart as the school specifies it; it does not claim the chart is true

How the numbers get where they get

Every layer of this chart is the same move repeated: put a number in the centre and walk it around the nine sectors in a fixed order, centre to northwest to west to northeast to south to north to southwest to east to southeast. The only questions are which number starts in the centre and whether the walk counts up or down.

1The period chart. The building's period number goes in the centre and walks up. For a Period 9 building that puts 9 in the middle, 1 in the northwest, and so on round.
2The water star. Look at what the period chart put in the sector the building faces. That number goes in the centre of a new walk, and whether it counts up or down depends on the polarity of the exact mountain you are facing.
3The mountain star. The same, from the sector at the building's back. Mountain reads the people in the house; water reads the money.
4The annual star. Reduce the year's digits and subtract from eleven. That number walks up from the centre. It moves one place down every year, which is why 2024 was a 3 year, 2025 a 2 and 2026 a 1.
5The monthly star. The same idea on a twelve-month cycle keyed to the year's branch, turning at the solar terms rather than on the first of the month.

The one number with no natural home is 5, which owns no trigram and therefore no direction of its own. When it lands in the facing or sitting sector, its walk has to borrow a polarity from somewhere, and this engine gives it the pattern the other odd numbers use. That is checkable rather than asserted: a Period 9 building facing due south has the 5 at its back, and the chart this produces matches the published one palace for palace.

What no calculator can do is walk your rooms. Flying Star as practised weighs the chart against the real land, the real water, and where you sleep, and a strong landform is allowed to overturn a bad chart. Treat what you get here as the chart, not as the reading.

Eight Mansions for the person →The long read →Score a real address →

The nine stars

The nine stars
1	White · Water 貪狼 Tan Lang	Career, scholarship and reputation. In Period 9 it is the star coming into its time, so a sector holding it is the one to build in.
2	Black · Earth 巨門 Ju Men	Illness. The advice is to keep the sector quiet and to put metal there, on the five-element reasoning that metal drains earth.
3	Jade · Wood 祿存 Lu Cun	Argument and litigation. Avoided for anywhere a disagreement would be expensive, and the traditional remedy is red or fire.
4	Green · Wood 文曲 Wen Qu	Study, writing and romance. The desk star, and the one parents are told to sit a child in.
5	Yellow · Earth 廉貞 Lian Zhen	The 5 Yellow, the most feared number in the system. The standard advice is not a cure but a refusal: do not dig, drill or renovate in this sector while it holds the 5.
6	White · Metal 武曲 Wu Qu	Authority, mentors and help from above. Read as the star of people senior to you deciding in your favour.
7	Red · Metal 破軍 Po Jun	Robbery, betrayal and sharp objects. It was the timely star of Period 7 and has been out of season since 2004, which is when its bad readings took over.
8	White · Earth 左輔 Zuo Fu	Wealth. The star everyone was told to activate for twenty years, and as of 2024 it has just retired: still respectable, no longer timely.
9	Purple · Fire 右弼 You Bi	The timely star of Period 9. Prosperity now rather than later, and the one a Period 9 reading is built around.