A Woman’s Bagua: The Terra Map Revealed

The Feng Shui that came to the west after China’s cultural revolution was limited and very patriarchal. This is a problem because ninety percent of American practitioners are women, so the tool does not allow them to use their full talents. Historically, the ‘great knowledge’ of geomancy and astrology was kept in the circle of professionals around the Emperor who shared parts of that knowledge with the Mandarins. But this secular system which guided road building, city planning and military campaigns was mostly destroyed by the infamous Red Guard.

What did survive outside communist China, and came to the West was a simple system the wise men shared with the common people through the Farmer’s Almanac. They coined sayings like, ‘Don’t point the foot of the bed towards the door because that’s how dead bodies are carried out,’ to explain adverse kinesiological reactions. They also created simplified oracles for the fortune tellers to give people hope and guidance. The third source of western Feng Shui was the system used in the Buddhist monasteries that were far removed from city centers. But the peasants, fortune tellers and priests could only use the most basic forms. The ‘Great Knowledge’ was reserved for the aristocracy. Why? Because knowledge is power and that was tightly held in the Emperor’s hands!

The evidence of this is in the Bagua which most people use. Why does it only have eight sides? Most of the other systems are based on twelve. There are twelve Animal Years, which are based on the position of Jupiter traveling through the twelve Signs. In Chinese Medicine there are twelve meridians along which the life force flows. In the laws of midday and midnight, which times the activity of the organs, there are twelve time periods. Acupuncturists measure the health of the twelve body systems by reading the patient’s twelve pulses. All the smart people got twelve, but the common people and priests only got eight parts in their map of the world. By designing it like a tortoise shell, a creature that moves slowly, and withdraws its head and limbs in response to danger, they used that pattern to keep the peasants, seers and priests in their place.

What we are sharing here are the beginning shapes of sacred geometry. It will seem familiar to an Astrologer, although the map appears upside down, compared to an Astrology chart. That is because the chart is sky based, while the bagua is earth based. Even calling it a bagua is incorrect, because that means eight parts. We have called this twelve sided map the Euro-Bagua for many years, but a better name might be the Terrestrial Map of Life.

While this may seem complicated, be aware, this is just the first ‘equation’ in this celestial, terrestrial geometry. We have used this system since 1995 in thousands of consultations and it is incredibly accurate for analyzing a client’s space and providing precise and effective solutions.

For this book, which was put together rather quickly for a national lecture, we pulled materials from three books from our certification program which we ran in Philadelphia for many years. The books are Feng Shui and the Tango, Happiness Lessons, and Prosperity Lessons. They were created for practitioners, and they are filled with plenty of real life stories of consultations and effective solutions. The sections we assembled are all about using this map.

Why do we call this a Woman’s Bagua? Because men often abhor complexity while women embrace it. There are angles that are masculine and others that are feminine, and the eight part map is dominated by masculine angles. In the twelve part map they are balanced, and you can energetically connect segments together in ways that celebrate the Goddess.