Flying Star chart for a building

Stand with your back to the building and read the direction you are looking. That is the facing, and it is usually the side with the main entrance or the largest opening rather than the side the postbox is on. Bearings here are magnetic, the way a luopan reads them.

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 tradition 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 honest thing to do with a genuine 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 the tradition specifies; 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 3The mountain star. The same, from the sector at the building's back. Mountain reads the people in the house; water reads the money.
4. 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.
5. 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 actual land, the actual water, and where you actually sleep, and a strong landform is allowed to overturn a bad chart. Treat what you get here as the chart, not as the reading.