The Bagua Mirror: A Feng Shui Cure for the Front Door

The bagua mirror is a small round mirror set in an octagonal frame painted with the eight trigrams of the Book of Changes. In feng shui it is a "cure" hung outside a building, above the front door, to turn back harmful currents of qi that strike the house from a road, a sharp corner or another aggressive feature. It is one of the most visible protective objects in Chinese neighbourhoods from Hong Kong to Singapore.

How to do it§

Feng shui treats a home as a body breathing qi through its door. Smooth, meandering qi nourishes; fast, straight or pointed qi, called sha qi ("killing qi"), cuts like an arrow. The bagua mirror is a strong remedy, and practitioners use it only when such a threat is really present.

1. Identify the problem. Stand at the front door and look out. Typical sources of sha qi are a road running straight at the door (a T-junction), the sharp corner of a neighbouring building pointing at you, a lamp post or tree directly in line with the door, or a long straight corridor in an apartment block. If there is nothing of the kind, a bagua mirror is not needed.
2. Choose the mirror. A flat mirror is said to reflect the harmful qi back the way it came; a convex mirror disperses it. A concave mirror, said to absorb and hold, is rarely recommended for doors. Most bagua mirrors for doors show the trigrams in the "Former Heaven" (Xiantian) arrangement, with Qian (three unbroken lines, Heaven) at the top and Kun (three broken lines, Earth) at the bottom.
3. Choose the day. Consult a Chinese almanac for a favourable day, and hang the mirror in daylight.
4. Cleanse the mirror. Wipe it with clean water and a soft cloth. Some people also hold it briefly in sunlight to "charge" it with yang energy.
5. Hang it outside. Fix it above the outside of the door frame, centred, facing outward towards the source. Check that Qian, the three solid lines, is at the top.
6. Respect the neighbours. Feng shui custom insists the mirror must not be aimed straight at a neighbour's door or window, because that would send the harmful qi on to them and is regarded as an aggressive act that causes quarrels. Angle it towards the road or object instead.
7. Never hang it inside. A bagua mirror facing into a home is believed to turn its force on the occupants.
8. Maintain it. Keep it clean. Replace it if it cracks or fades; wrap the old one in paper and dispose of it with thanks, or return it to a temple or the shop it came from.

Origins and history§

Mirrors were protective long before feng shui manuals discussed them. Bronze mirrors of the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) were cast with cosmological designs and placed in tombs, and in the fourth century the Daoist writer Ge Hong advised in his Baopuzi that anyone entering the mountains should carry a mirror on his back. Spirits and shape-shifting creatures, he explained, cannot hide their true form in a mirror, so they keep their distance. The demon-revealing mirror became a lasting motif of Chinese religion and literature.

The eight trigrams (bagua) come from the Yijing, the Book of Changes, whose core dates to the early first millennium BCE. Two classic arrangements developed: the "Former Heaven" sequence, associated with the legendary Fuxi and systematised by Song dynasty scholars such as Shao Yong (1011–1077), and the "Later Heaven" sequence attributed to King Wen. Feng shui teachers generally say the Former Heaven order, as the ideal pattern of the cosmos before change, is the right one for protective objects.

Feng shui itself, the art of siting graves and houses in harmony with the flows of the landscape, is attested in early form in burial texts attributed to Guo Pu (276–324). The domestic use of bagua mirrors is documented most fully in late imperial and modern practice, and Western observers from Ernest Eitel in 1873 onward described them on houses in southern China. Anthropologists such as Stephan Feuchtwang and Ole Bruun show how such cures sit between learned cosmology and everyday neighbourhood life, including disputes when one family's mirror seems to point at another's.

Variations§

Some households use a plain round mirror, a carved tiger's head or a pair of stone lions instead of a bagua. In apartments a bagua may be placed inside a window facing out, never into the room. Some modern Western schools treat the bagua as an overall map of the home rather than a door charm; see the separate entry on the wealth corner.

Safety and good sense§

Fix the mirror securely so it cannot fall on anyone entering, and place it where it will not reflect sunlight into drivers' eyes. Feng shui cures are a traditional way of caring for a home; real hazards such as a dangerous junction call for practical measures as well.

Sources and further reading§

• Feng-Shui: or, The Rudiments of Natural Science in China — Ernest J. Eitel, 1873
• An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese Geomancy — Stephan D. R. Feuchtwang, 1974
• Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divination between State Orthodoxy and Popular Religion — Ole Bruun, 2003
• An Introduction to Feng Shui — Ole Bruun, 2008
• The I Ching or Book of Changes — Richard Wilhelm, 1950