The Bagua Map

1. What is the Bagua?

The bagua (literally “eight trigrams”) is a grid borrowed from the I Ching that divides any space into eight outer zones around a center. Each zone governs one area of life — wealth, relationships, career, health — and carries an element, a color, and supporting crystals.

There are two main schools, and it helps to know which one you're reading with:

Black Hat (BTB) school — the bagua is aligned to the main door of the room. Wherever you stand in the doorway, the far-left corner is always Wealth, the far-right is always Love. Simple, no compass needed.

Compass (Classical) school — the bagua is aligned to true north using a compass. North is always Career, regardless of where the door sits. This is more precise and the method Petra uses.

2. The Nine Zones

Eight directions ring a central Health zone. The wheel above shows each with its life area and element:

3. How to overlay it on your room

Stand inside the room and find north with a compass. Mentally (or on a sketch) place the North/Career zone along the wall that faces north, then rotate the rest of the wheel to match. Every corner now maps to a life area — the southeast corner is your wealth corner, the southwest is relationships, and so on.

4. What happens when a zone is missing

Few homes are perfect squares. In an L-shaped room or a home with a cut-off corner, a bagua zone can fall outside the walls — a “missing area.” If your southeast corner is missing, the wealth zone is weakened. Feng shui fixes this by symbolically “completing” the shape: a mirror on the inner wall, a plant or crystal placed at the inner corner, or lighting to draw energy back into the gap.