How to take a compass bearing with your phone, and the three mistakes everyone makes
For clients sending a remote reading. Five minutes.
Every remote reading we do starts from one number: the bearing of the front door, or of the stone. Get it right and the rest of the reading stands on it. Get it wrong by fifteen degrees and you have moved the house into the next mountain on the luopan, under a different star. Here is how to take it well.
The method
- Stand inside the door with your back to it, facing out. For a grave, stand behind the stone, facing the way it faces.
- Hold the phone flat at chest height, a hand's width away from your body. Open the compass app and wait until the number stops moving.
- Photograph the screen. Do not write the number down from memory.
- Step three paces to the left and repeat; three paces to the right and repeat. Send all three photographs.
The three mistakes
Steel. Cars, railings, a steel door frame, the rebar in a concrete lintel: all of them pull a phone compass by five to fifteen degrees. Stand clear of metal. The three readings a few paces apart are how we see the pull; if they disagree, we know which to trust.
Facing the wrong way. We need the direction the door faces, looking out. A reading taken standing outside looking in is a hundred and eighty degrees off. It happens more than you would think, and it is the single most common reason we write back.
Trusting the first number. A phone compass calibrates as it moves. The first reading after you open the app is often wrong. Move the phone in a slow figure of eight, then read again.
Why fifteen degrees matters
The luopan divides the circle into twenty-four mountains of fifteen degrees each. In the Tianxing school each mountain carries a star. The line between 壬 and 子 is the line between two stars and two readings. So the bearing is not a detail of the intake form. It is where the reading begins.
See the readings
What a cemetery plot map does not tell you
For families choosing a plot abroad.
Families choosing a burial plot in Vancouver, Sydney or Kuala Lumpur are usually handed a map: sections, rows, plot numbers, prices. Everything on it is about administration. Nothing on it is about the land. These are the five things we look at instead, and you can look at the first four yourself before you call us.
1. The slope behind
Stand at the plot and turn around. Does the ground rise behind it, even slightly, or fall away? A plot wants something at its back. A plot on the crest of a rise with nothing behind it is exposed, however good the view.
2. The two sides
Are there gentle rises, mature trees, or at least the land holding on both sides? A plot on the open edge of a lawn, with the car park on one side and nothing on the other, has lost an arm. The Form School calls the two sides the Green Dragon and the White Tiger; a cemetery calls them the next section over, but the land does not care what it is called.
3. What is in front
First an open view, then something at a distance: a line of trees, a low hill, the far side of the valley. A wall, a building or a bank pressing close in front is the opposite of what you want.
4. Where the water goes
Cemeteries are drained, and the drains follow the natural slope. Watch where rain would run. Water that gathers in front of the plot and leaves out of sight is right. Water running straight at the plot, or past the head of it, is not.
5. The bearing and the stars
Most cemetery rows face one way by rule. That fixes the facing. The family's dates tell us whether that facing suits the people it is for, and the twenty-four stars of the Tianxing luopan tell us which rows sit better than others. This is the part you cannot do from the map, and the part we do.
How to send it
The plot map with your candidates marked; eight photographs of each candidate, from behind looking out, from the front, left and right looking in, the approach and the far view; a bearing taken as described above; and the names and dates of the person to be buried and of the family. We rank the candidates and tell you why. For a family in Vancouver last year, this took the choice from eleven plots to one.
Ancestral grave site reading
Feng shui 2027, the year of the Fire Goat: where not to dig
Annual note. Applies from 4 February 2027 to 3 February 2028.
On 4 February 2027 the year turns to 丁未, Yin Fire over the Goat. For anyone building, renovating, moving a door or setting a stone in the coming year, three directions matter.
Tai Sui, the Grand Duke, in the south-west
In a Goat year the Grand Duke sits in 未, the south-west by south, roughly 202 to 217 degrees. Do not dig, build or break ground in that sector of your house, your land or a grave this year, and do not sit facing it for the year's important decisions. The old rule allows you to face the Grand Duke; it forbids disturbing him.
Sui Po, the year breaker, in the north-east
Opposite the Grand Duke, in 丑, north-east by north. The same rule: no groundworks in that sector.
The Three Killings in the west
For a Goat year the Three Killings occupy the west: 申酉戌, roughly 232 to 307 degrees. Avoid construction there, and avoid sitting with your back to the west for the year.
What the Tianxing school looks at instead
These annual afflictions are the compass school's calendar. They tell you when not to disturb a direction. They do not tell you whether a site is good. A grave under a noble star on a true dragon is good in 2027 as in any other year, and a poor site is poor whatever the year. If you must set a stone or move a door in 2027, we choose the date and the direction of work to avoid the three afflictions, and we read the site itself first.
Three things to do before February
- Take the bearing of your front door and mark the south-west, north-east and west sectors on your floor plan.
- Postpone groundworks in those sectors to 2028, or ask for a date and a compensating direction.
- If a burial cannot wait, tell us the dates of the deceased and the family. Date selection is included with any grave reading.
Date selection
