Sitting and facing on the luopan
Stand at the stone or the door with your back to it and look out. The direction you look is the facing. The direction behind you is the sitting. They are always 180 degrees apart, so one fixes the other. A stone that sits on Zi, north at 0 degrees, faces Wu, south at 180 degrees. Each of the 24 mountains is 15 degrees wide.
Inside a mountain there is a finer division, fen jin. This is where a master makes the last small turn of a few degrees, so the stone does not sit on the line between two mountains, and so it lines up with the water and the facing peak. The Tianxing school then reads which of the 24 stars the facing lands on, matching the sky to ground that has already been judged.
What this means on the ground
For a grave, the facing must answer two things in front of it. The first is the incoming water: the stream, road or slope that brings water towards the site. The second is the facing peak, the an shan close in front or the chao shan further out. The stone is turned so that the water arrives from one side across the front and the peak sits square in view.
For a house, the front door is the facing. Look out of it. A clean open space, then something firm beyond, is what you want. For a shop, the door should take the street the customers come from, not the quiet side. In every case the land is read first, then the degree is chosen to fit the land.
Common mistakes
The most common error is to take a lucky direction from a book or an app and turn the stone to it, with no regard for the ground. The stone ends up facing a wall of hill, or turning its shoulder to the water. A good degree on bad ground is still bad ground.
A second error is reading the facing before the site is chosen. Facing is the last of the five steps, after dragon, hills, water and site, and it cannot repair a poor choice in the first four. A third is sitting the stone exactly on the line between two mountains. Readings there are unstable, and the fen jin is meant to move off that line.
Questions people ask
What does facing direction mean in feng shui?
It is the direction a grave stone or a front door looks out towards, measured on the luopan in one of 24 mountains. Its opposite, the sitting, is the direction at the back. A master sets the facing last, so that it answers the water and the hills already found on the land.
How do I measure the facing of my house with a phone?
Open the compass app, stand just inside the front door with your back to it, and hold the phone level. Read the bearing looking out. Take three readings a step apart and keep the middle one. Then send the number with photos of the door, the view out and the back of the house.
Can a good facing fix a bad plot?
No. The facing is a fine adjustment made after the dragon, hills, water and site have been accepted. On a plot with a broken range or water rushing straight away, a good degree changes very little. Choose the ground first.
Send us three readings and a few photos, and Master Zhang will tell you in a site reading whether the facing answers the land.