Feng-shui: “The 24 ways”

There are some cases of choosing the directions in the feng-shui divinations. One is “choosing the directions” through “the 24 ways”. That is the sum of the 4 trigrams from the Earlier Eight Trigrams---Qian, Kun and Xun, the 8 Heavenly Stems of “jia, yi, bing, ding, geng, xin, ren, gui” (there are actually 10 Heavenly Stems) and the 12 Earthy Branches of “zi, chou, yin, mao, chen, si, wu wei, shen, you, xu, hai”. 24 is regarded as the number of Heaven and Earth. It corresponds to the 24 solar terms in the sky and the 24 directions of the mountains on the earth, so this method is also called “choosing the directions through 24 Mountains”. The “Mountain” is actually the “direction” on a Feng-shui Compass (with 15 degrees for each “Mountain”). As the 24 “Mountains” are matched with the Eight Trigrams, there are 3 “Mountains” for each trigram. Therefore, the setup of the compass is called “A Trigram in Control of the Three Mountains”.

The feng-shui masters say that the 12 Earthly Branches represent the 12 months in a year, the 12 two-hour units in a day, and the 12 Yearly Animals. In this way the 12 Earthy Branches (in combination of the Heavenly Stems) are used to denote the time of a person’s birth, which is comprised of hour, date, month and year, and called “8 characters of Birth.” Even today, when the young chooses their husband or wife will try to calculate whether their “8 characters of Birth” match with each other.

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