Appendix II: A Concise Glossary of Terms

The following collects the main terms appearing in this article, grouped by topic, with one or two sentences each for quick reference.

A. Basic Coordinates

Sitting, facing (mountain, facing): the direction a building's back is set against is the sitting (or mountain); the direction it looks out onto is the facing. "Zi mountain, wu facing" means sitting north, facing south.
The Twenty-Four Mountains: a directional system dividing the compass's circle equally into twenty-four sectors of fifteen degrees each, made up of the twelve branches, eight stems, and four intercardinal trigrams.
The Eight Palaces: the Later Heaven trigrams' eightfold division of the plane (Kan-north, Li-south, Zhen-east, Dui-west, and the four intercardinal directions), each palace governing three mountains.
The Three-Cycles dragons: Xuankong's classification of the Twenty-Four Mountains into the Heaven, Earth, and Human Cycles; the middle, left, and right mountains of each palace each belong to one Cycle, and each is further assigned its own yin or yang.
Pure yin and pure yang: a separate system of yin-yang classification for the Twenty-Four Mountains, assigned according to na-jia matched to the Earlier Heaven trigram positions—twelve pure-yang mountains and twelve pure-yin mountains, used by the Sanhe and gua-flipping systems.
Double-mountain Five Phases: a system pairing the mountains on the Heaven Plate two by two into twelve double-mountains, assigning a Five Phase to each according to the Sanhe Bureau; used exclusively by the Sanhe school.
Cyclical periods (yuanyun): the principle-and-qi school's temporal framework. The Three Cycles and Nine Periods: one hundred eighty years divided into nine Periods of twenty years each; the Two Cycles and Eight Periods: each of the eight trigrams governing one Period, a yang line counting nine years and a yin line counting six.
Form (luantou): the concept standing opposite "principle-and-qi," referring to the physical layer of mountain-and-water configuration; "formal baleful influences" (xingsha) refers to unfavorable configurations such as a road thrusting at the site, a reflex bow, or a sharp point aimed at it.

B. The Compass and Its Operation

The three plates and three needles: the Earth Plate's true needle (for gauging the dragon and fixing the facing), the Human Plate's middle needle (for adjusting the sand), and the Heaven Plate's seam needle (for taking in the water)—the three rings each offset from the others by seven and a half degrees.
Gauging the dragon: determining the direction from which the incoming dragon enters. Fixing the facing: measuring and selecting the sitting-and-facing. Adjusting the sand: measuring the direction of a sand-peak to argue generation and overcoming. Taking in the water: measuring the arrival and departure of water to argue fortune and misfortune.
The Piercing-Mountain Seventy-Two Dragons / the Earth-Piercing Sixty Dragons: fine-grained rings of subdivision beneath the Earth Plate, used respectively for gauging the dragon and for determining the qi taken in at the site.
Fen jin ("parting the gold"): the finest tier of fixing the facing (the one hundred twenty fen jin), fine-tuning by several degrees within a mountain sector to select a na-yin in its flourishing phase and avoid the seam of "void and death."

C. Xuankong Flying Star

The New Year's Chart: the base chart matching the Luo Writing to the Later Heaven trigrams (Kan-one, Kun-two, Zhen-three... Li-nine).
The Period Chart / Mountain Chart / Facing Chart: the current Period's star is entered into the center and flown forward to yield the Period Chart; the Period-Chart star in the sitting palace and in the facing palace are each entered into the center and flown forward or backward according to the yin-yang of their Three-Cycles dragon, yielding the Mountain Chart (governing descendants) and the Facing Chart (governing wealth).
Xia gua / oblique facing / substitute trigrams: a sitting-and-facing near the exact center of a mountain sector is xia gua; one deviating too far (commonly, beyond three degrees) is an oblique facing, requiring the star entered into the center to be replaced according to the substitute-trigram formula (star-casting).
The commanding star: the star currently in power for the Period. Flourishing Mountain, Flourishing Facing: the commanding Mountain star arrives at the sitting side and the commanding Facing star arrives at the facing side, a configuration flourishing in both descendants and wealth. Mountain Ascending Water Descending: the reversed configuration, indicating loss of descendants and financial ruin, which turns auspicious if the sitting side is empty and the facing side is full. Double Stars Meeting the Sitting / Meeting the Facing: both commanding stars arrive together at the sitting palace or the facing palace.
The City Gate formula: if either palace flanking the facing contains a water outlet, and its Period-Chart star, entered into the center and flown backward, brings the commanding star to that palace, it can be borrowed to boost wealth.
Seven Stars Grand Theft: an advanced configuration, occurring under specific conditions, that borrows the qi of a coming Period ahead of time via the parent-and-child triads (one-four-seven, two-five-eight, three-six-nine); highly divergently interpreted.
Gathering the mountain and expelling the baleful influence: the work of cross-checking that birth-and-flourishing stars are properly placed on mountain (solid) or water (open) terrain, and that declining or moribund stars are placed where they can do no harm; its master rule is "the dragon spirit of the mountain must not descend into the water; the dragon spirit of the water must not ascend the mountain."
Entering confinement: the current Period's flourishing Facing star falling into the central palace, indicating the end of the current fortune and the blocking of wealth; used to estimate the time-limit of a house's fortune.
Changing the heavenly heart: renovating a house's central palace (exposing it to the sky) in order to renew its fortune; "the heavenly heart" also refers to the central palace itself.
The Zero Spirit / the Proper Spirit: the direction of the current Period's trigram-qi is the Proper Spirit (which should be solid); the opposite direction, matched to ten with it, is the Zero Spirit (which should have water); "channeling the water into the Zero Hall" indicates flourishing wealth.
The Three-Star Triads: the three combinations of star numbers one-four-seven, two-five-eight, and three-six-nine, an important concept in Xuankong configuration analysis.
Matched to ten / matched generation and completion: two stars (or hexagrams) whose numbers sum to ten, or which form a one-six, two-seven, three-eight, or four-nine pairing, are both judged auspicious as being in mutual accord.
Five Yellow / the Sickness Talisman: Five Yellow (the central palace's earth-baleful-influence, which should be kept quiet and not disturbed) and Two Black (the Sickness Talisman) are the two most dreaded stars in the Flying Star system; the direction they occupy in a given year should not be disturbed by construction.

D. Eight Mansions and Sanhe

East Four / West Four: Kan, Li, Zhen, and Xun are the East Four; Qian, Kun, Gen, and Dui are the West Four; both houses and people are each assigned to one group, and a match within the same group is auspicious.
The life-gua: an individual's trigram attribute, derived from the birth year (calculated differently for men and women), used to match a person to a house.
The eight Roaming-Year stars: Life Qi, Prolonged Life, Heavenly Physician, and Reclining Position (the four auspicious ones), and Death Cutoff, Five Ghosts, Six Killings, and Calamity Harm (the four inauspicious ones), distributed across the eight palaces from Reclining Position according to the Great Roaming Years verse.
Gate, master bedroom, and stove: the three principal objects of judgment in the Yangzhai Sanyao—the front gate taking in qi, the master bedroom housing the occupants, and the stove governing food—with fortune and misfortune argued by matching all three to the trigrams.
The Four Great Bureaus: the Water Bureau (shen-zi-chen), the Wood Bureau (hai-mao-wei), the Fire Bureau (yin-wu-xu), and the Metal Bureau (si-you-chou), the Bureau fixed according to the tomb-storehouse direction where the water outlet is located.
The Twelve Stages of Life: Birth, Bathing, Cap-and-Girdle, Officialdom, Emperor's Prime, Decline, Illness, Death, Tomb, Cutoff, Gestation, and Nurture, laid out across the directions to argue the fortune or misfortune of water's arrival and departure.
The method that works from the facing: the new Sanhe method, in the Dili Wujue lineage, of casting the Twelve Stages from the facing.
The Yellow Springs Baleful Influence: a system of taboos concerning water seen in a specific direction given a specific facing ("geng and ding with kun above is the Yellow Springs," and so on), with an exemption variant known as "the Yellow Springs that rescues the poor."
The Eight-Baleful-Influences check: each of the eight trigram sitting mountains has its own taboo branch (Kan avoids chen, Kun avoids mao, Zhen avoids shen, Xun avoids you, Qian avoids wu, Dui avoids si, Gen avoids yin, Li avoids hai); if the dragon, water, sitting, or facing falls afoul of it, misfortune is indicated—a baleful-influence filter shared in common across the schools.

E. General and Date-Selection Terms

Purple-White: the general-purpose temporal layer distributing the nine stars across the nine palaces by year, month, day, and hour, the source of the annual directional fortune forecasts.
Tai Sui / the Three Killings: the baleful-spirit taboos attached to the direction of the year's branch and to its clashing and harmonizing directions, generally avoided for construction and renovation.
Fate-forging: the date-selection method of using the four pillars of the moment of groundbreaking or burial to support and supplement the sitting mountain and benefit the person concerned, advocated by Jiang Daihong.
Matching the immortal's fate to the mountain: the burial-worksheet technique of arguing generation, overcoming, clash, and harmony between the deceased's birth-year stem-and-branch and the sitting mountain's fen jin.
Fixing the pole: the operation of determining a house's central point (the heavenly heart) in order to divide it into the eight directions and nine palaces; the convention for fixing the pole in an irregular floor plan varies from school to school.
The Heaven Pool / the seabed line: the compass's central chamber housing the magnetic needle, and the reference line at its base used to align the needle, on which reading precision depends.
The Heaven-Heart's ten crossing lines: the red lines (or threads) crossing on the compass's outer plate, pressed against the measured direction to read off the values of each ring.
Fuyuan: the Ming-dynasty term for the life-gua; the Yangzhai Shishu's "On the Fuyuan" is precisely the doctrine of matching an East Four or West Four life to a house.
The Lu Ban ruler: a specialized measuring ruler within the craftsman's tradition for judging the fortune and misfortune of a door's dimensions, a separate system of construction-related fortune running alongside directional principle-and-qi.
Taking the road as water / an inch higher counts as a mountain: adaptive mnemonics for applying the principle-and-qi model to the city—a low, open thoroughfare is treated as water, and anything elevated and obstructing is treated as sand.