Knowledge Map
The Knowledge Map is a guided route through the site’s core ideas. Rather than presenting every article as a collection to browse, it begins with a question and moves step by step through the field, the concepts used to understand a place, and the ways those ideas begin to be applied.
Start with a Question
Why do different spaces affect people differently?
People often notice that one place feels open and settled while another feels exposed, confined, or difficult to use. Traditional Feng Shui does not treat that response as the whole judgment, but it takes the differences between places seriously. It asks what conditions are present, how they relate to one another, and what those conditions allow a place to receive, gather, support, or disperse.
This question is the starting point for the path below.
Foundations
Before turning to technical concepts, it helps to establish what Traditional Feng Shui is, what it studies, and how the field developed.
01
What Is Feng Shui?
Begin by defining the field itself. Traditional Feng Shui is concerned with the conditions of a place and the relationships among its surroundings, physical form, orientation, spatial organization, changing conditions, and human use. It is more than decoration, personal preference, or a collection of fixed rules.
Read: What Is Feng Shui?
02
What does Traditional Feng Shui study in order to understand a place?
Once the field is clear, the next step is to understand its scope. Feng Shui does not isolate one object and judge it by itself. It moves from the wider setting toward the site and building, then considers how different conditions work together as a connected whole.
Read: What Traditional Feng Shui Studies in Order to Understand a Place
03
The History of Feng Shui
With the field and its scope established, the historical background becomes easier to place. The history of Feng Shui shows how ways of reading land, settlement, orientation, buildings, and time developed across different periods rather than appearing as one fixed system all at once.
Read: The History of Feng Shui
Core Concepts
The next layer introduces three concepts that help Traditional Feng Shui describe patterns and relationships within a place. They are not shortcuts to a judgment; each becomes meaningful through the conditions in which it is used.
04
What Is Qi in Traditional Feng Shui?
Qi is one of the foundational concepts of Traditional Feng Shui. Rather than treating it simply as “energy,” Feng Shui understands Qi through the conditions and relationships of a place—how it moves, gathers, comes to rest, or disperses.
05
What Is Yin–Yang in Traditional Feng Shui?
Yin and Yang describe relative qualities rather than two separate energies or fixed labels. In Feng Shui, they help compare conditions such as light and shade, movement and stillness, openness and enclosure, activity and rest.
06
What Are the Five Phases in Traditional Feng Shui?
The Five Phases—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water—describe recurring patterns of activity, relationship, and change. In Traditional Feng Shui, they are used to understand qualities and interactions within a place rather than as fixed substances or decorative symbols.
Applying
Move from core concepts to the observation of actual places, beginning with the surrounding environment and then the internal organization of a building.
07
How Does Traditional Feng Shui Assess a Site and Its Surroundings?
Traditional Feng Shui begins with the wider landscape or urban setting before moving toward the site and building. It considers landform, water, roads, surrounding buildings, open space, orientation, distance, and scale as conditions that shape what a site receives.
Read: How Does Traditional Feng Shui Assess a Site and Its Surroundings?
08
How Does the Internal Organization of a Building Contribute to Its Feng Shui Conditions?
After the wider setting and site have been considered, the assessment can move inside the building. Traditional Feng Shui looks at entrances, boundaries, gathering spaces, circulation, Yin–Yang conditions, and important positions to understand how the interior contributes to the Feng Shui conditions of the place.
Read: How Does the Internal Organization of a Building Contribute to Its Feng Shui Conditions?