Compass method or front-door method.

There are two ways to lay the Bagua (the eight-sector map) over a home. The choice is the single largest practical divide in feng shui. Here is the honest version.

One method trusts the compass. The other trusts the front door. They produce different maps of the same house. You have to pick one before anything else lines up.

Method A. The compass method.

This is the Classical approach. It is what Form school, Compass school, and Flying Stars (a directional timing system) all use. It treats your home as a unique alignment with the real compass directions of the earth.

The procedure is short. Stand in the centre of the home. Face the front door. Take a compass bearing. Then rotate the Bagua so its directions match the real-world directions of the building. South sits where south is. North sits where north is. The map and the world agree.

The reading is the load-bearing step. Without a compass reading, nothing else lines up. The bearing is what ties the rest of the tradition to your specific home. The elements, the trigrams, the kua number, the Later Heaven sequence (the directional ordering of the eight trigrams). All of it keys off the reading.

A phone compass will get you started. A simple handheld compass is enough for the bearing. If you want one place to keep your Kua number, personal directions, and floor-plan notes together, the Personal Feng Shui Compass is the digital reference for that. The methodology page has the full Later Heaven table and the bearing math.

Method B. The front-door method.

This is the BTB approach (Black Sect Tantric Buddhism), from Lin Yun's Black Sect tradition. It treats every home consistently and works without a compass.

The Bagua is anchored to the front door, not to the directions of the earth. Stand at the threshold facing in. The map drops over the room from where you are looking.

Knowledge sits at the near-left. Career at the near-centre. Helpful People at the near-right. Wealth sits at the far-left. Fame at the far-centre. Relationships at the far-right. The same nine sectors, the same life areas, but anchored to your entry instead of to magnetic north.

The advantage is portability. Any home, any room, any rental. No bearing required. The trade-off is that the map no longer corresponds to the actual directional logic the Classical schools work with. You are choosing a different lineage, not a shortcut.

How to pick one.

If you can take a compass bearing and want the tradition the rest of this guide teaches, use the compass method. It belongs to the Classical compass school, and almost everything else in this cluster assumes it.

If you are renting, travelling, or want a simpler first pass, the front-door method is honest work. Many readers find it still trains the eye. It is not a lesser tool. It is a different tool.

Pick one. Stick with it. Switching methods mid-walk is the most common beginner mistake, and the fastest way to end up with a map that contradicts itself. If you start with the front-door method and later want the compass method, run the whole reading again from scratch.

Compass-method readers usually want their personal directions next. That is find your kua number.

What both methods agree on.

Both methods place a life area in every sector of the home. Both methods ask you to walk the home sector by sector. Both rest on the same nine life areas and the same trigram set. The two methods disagree on placement. They agree on intent.

Compass or door. One Bagua. One walk.

Where to go next.

• Ten seconds. Find your personal direction with the kua calculator.
• An afternoon. Read what to do when the floor plan is not a clean rectangle, or see a worked example using the compass method on the wealth corner.
• Deeper read. Open the methodology for the bearing math, and revisit what the map layer actually is once the orientation has settled.