Flying Stars
Flying stars are the most calculation-heavy branch of feng shui: the year a building was built and its facing direction produce a chart of nine sectors, each with three numbers. This is the Xuan Kong school, and unlike the Kua number it describes not a person but a specific building.
If you know the facing in degrees, enter it — the mountain will be determined automatically, and the choice in the list will be ignored. No compass? Take the facing from a map. The year and month are needed for the time stars.
What the calculator works out
It needs two inputs: the construction period and the facing direction in degrees.
A period is a twenty-year span. We're currently in the ninth: from 2024 to 2043. A building is assigned the period in which it was built or in which it last had a major renovation with the roof and windows replaced.
The facing direction is measured with a compass from the main side of the building — the one with the most windows, light and activity. The full 360 degrees are divided into 24 mountains of 15 degrees each, and precision matters here: neighboring mountains produce different charts.
The output is a grid of nine palaces. Each holds three numbers: the mountain star, the water star and the period star.
On top of the natal chart, the calculator overlays the stars of the selected year and month, finds formations — star combinations that the tradition singles out — and shows where in the house the stars that prosper in Period 9 are located.
How the chart is built
The construction procedure is the same for every building.
- The period number is placed in the center and flies through the palaces in Lo Shu order: center, northwest, west, northeast, south, north, southwest, east, southeast. This is the base chart.
- The number that lands in the facing palace becomes the water star. The number in the sitting palace becomes the mountain star.
- Each of the two stars is placed in the center of its own chart and flies again. The direction of flight — forward or reverse — is determined by the polarity of the mountain: across the 24 mountains it alternates according to the rule of yin and yang.
The water star governs money and movement, the mountain star health and relationships. The period star shows the palace's overall background.
Annual and Monthly Stars
Every year a new star moves into the center, and the nine annual stars fly through the palaces in the same Lo Shu order. The year is counted from Lichun, not from January 1: the star of 2027, the 9, takes effect on February 4.
Tradition pays special attention to two of the annual stars: the 5 Yellow and the 2 Black. In 2026 the 5 is in the south, and in 2027 it is in the north. In these sectors people don't start renovations or knock through walls.
Besides the stars, each year has three forbidden directions: Tai Sui (the Grand Duke), the mountain of the year's branch; Sui Po (the Year Breaker), the mountain opposite it; and the Three Killings, the side opposite the triangle of the year's branch. The monthly stars are calculated the same way, but from the jie solar terms: the Tiger month begins at Lichun, the Rabbit month at Awakening of Insects.
The same Tai Sui, Three Killings and the annual 5 star (5 Yellow) are also checked before a trip: the travel direction calculator shows what the year, month and day, as well as the Qi Men chart for your departure hour, say about the direction you're heading in.
Formations
The calculator checks for the classical star combinations.
- Prosperous Mountain and Water: the star matching the period is the mountain star at the sitting and the water star at the facing. The most auspicious arrangement.
- Reversed Mountain and Water: the opposite situation, with the star matching the period as the mountain star at the facing and as the water star at the sitting.
- Double Stars at Facing or Sitting: both stars matching the period, the mountain star and the water star, are in the same palace.
- Combination of Ten: in every palace the mountain or water star adds up to ten with the period star.
- Pearl String and Parent String: in every palace the three stars are consecutive numbers or belong to one triad: 1·4·7, 2·5·8, 3·6·9.
- Fu Yin and Fan Yin: the 5 lands in the center of the mountain or water chart, and the stars return to their home palaces or end up opposite them.
What the numbers mean
The nine stars behave differently depending on the period. Right now, in Period 9, the main prosperous star is star 9, and the next strongest is star 1. Star 8, which governed wealth for twenty years, has been considered retreating since 2024.
Star 5 and star 2 are traditionally called the harmful ones: they aren't activated but weakened with metal. For the full breakdown, see the list of the nine stars.
Limitations of the method
Three things are worth knowing before you move any furniture.
- Your phone's compass lies. Rebar, appliances and elevator shafts throw the needle off by tens of degrees. A difference of one mountain changes the whole chart.
- For an apartment, the facing direction is debatable. For a detached house it's obvious, but for an apartment in a high-rise the schools disagree: some use the building's facade, others the side with the apartment's main windows.
- Star 5 has no trigram of its own. The rule for its polarity differs between schools; our calculator uses the most widespread one, and in disputed cases it's worth checking the result with a practitioner.
- Mountain boundaries: the “void line.” If the facing is less than one and a half degrees from the boundary between two neighboring mountains, the charts of the two mountains differ, and for such a house the schools draw a special chart with replacement stars. The calculator warns you about this if you enter degrees.
There's no verifiable evidence that a star chart influences events. It's a tradition with a rigorous internal logic, not a measurable method.
Frequently asked questions
Does a building's chart change when the period changes?
The base chart of a building doesn't change; it's tied to the period of construction. What changes are the annual and monthly stars laid over it.
Do I need to recalculate after a renovation?
It's held that only a major renovation, with the roof and windows replaced, renews a building's period. A cosmetic one changes nothing.
Can I calculate for an apartment rather than the whole building?
Yes, practitioners do this: they take the direction of the apartment's main windows. But the result then describes the apartment, not the building, and the two charts shouldn't be mixed.
My building was built in the 1970s — which period is it?
Period 6, from 1964 to 1983. Khrushchev-era apartment blocks from the 1950s–1960s fall in Period 5 or 6, Stalin-era buildings in Period 4 or 5. If the building hasn't been re-roofed and its windows haven't been replaced since then, the period stays the same.