There is a general feng shui principle that you don’t want your house to sit at the end of a cul-de-sac or the cross section of a T-junction. The idea is that the qi (air currents) would be moving too quickly or too directly toward the house. The energies moving directly toward the house, especially from a long and/or busy street can exacerbate whatever else is indicated by the feng shui of the house.

For example, let us say there is a house which can attract theft or accidents based on when it was built and its compass alignment. This is a hidden potential which can be activated by a number of influences. One of those influences could be the road alignment and the negatives are more likely to come out with this kind of direct stimulation. Conversely, a house with very good feng shui could be made even luckier with a direct street alignment, although that is much more rare.

The more we know about the occupant(s) of a house, the more we can predict what may happen. The birth year can also tell us if a road aligned with a house can be bad for a specific occupant. When we are determining the year of birth for someone, February 4th or 5th is the beginning of each Chinese SOLAR year. This should not be confused with the Chinese LUNAR New Year which vacillates by weeks. So, keep that in mind when you are calculating a birth year. For example, someone born on February 2, 1960 would actually be considered born in 1959.

To determine the “Yang Ren” direction for a person, it is the last digit of the birth year that is noted. So, someone born in the 1959 cycle would note “9” as the last digit. The last digit of the year of birth will indicate what direction is particularly harmful for the person, should a road or a real water source (stream) be aligned directly with the house. This is one reason why Person A might do well in a house and Person B may not, even with the identical Feng Shui features.

In order to really know the direction the end of a street lines up with a house, you do need to use a compass and you need to make sure that you are using either a real compass or a compass App which is calibrated to magnetic North and NOT True North. We use magnetic North as our reference point in Feng Shui. In any given part of the world, magnetic North may be 0 to 18 or more degrees east or west of true north.

For example, in Los Angeles magnetic North is currently about 12 degrees east of True North. If you were looking at an aerial photo of a Los Angeles house facing what appears to be exactly west (270 degrees), you would find that an in-person compass reading would reveal the direction to be 258 degrees instead (12 degrees east of true north means we subtract from the True North reading). A compass reading west of True North (like in New York) would mean adding on the correct number of degrees determined by the magnetic reading instead of subtracting.

Sometimes we only need to concern ourselves with one of the eight major directions (North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West, Northwest.) However, in order to identify your Yang Ren direction in relation to your own home, you need to have a precise compass reading since the direction you will find is only a portion of one of these eight major directions, just a 15 degree increment and not the whole 45 degree range of the basic direction. For example within the whole 45 degrees range of east, it is only the middle third range which is the Rabbit sector, sometimes called East-2.

Each person has a Yang Ren direction based on the last digit of their birth year. This is NOT based on a Chinese zodiac sign. For example, a person born in 1962 (Year of Tiger) and a person born in 1952 (Year of Dragon) have the same Yang Ren direction because their birth years both end in a “2”.

Birth year ends in 0: Yang Ren= Rooster sector of exactly middle of West (263-277 degrees)

Birth Year ends in 1: Yang Ren=Dog sector of N/Northwest (293-307 degrees)

Birth year ends in a 2: Yang Ren= Rat sector of exactly middle of North (353-7 degrees)

Birth year ends in a 3: yang Ren=Ox sector of N/Northeast (23-37 degrees)

Birth year ends in a 4: Yang Ren=Rabbit sector of exactly middle of East (83-97 degrees)

Birth year ends in a 5: Yang Ren=Dragon sector of E/Southeast (113-127 degrees)

Birth year ends in a 6 or 8: Yang Ren=Horse sector of exactly middle of South (173-187 degrees)

Birth year ends in a 7 or 9: Yang Ren=Sheep sector of S/Southwest (203-217 degrees)

If a person has a road lined up to their house in their Yang Ren direction, the old Feng Shui books say that a person could have a surgery, bleeding, an overdose or some poisoning. It sounds dire, but this alignment would be statistically not common. It could cause any type of mishap. What happens if your house is in fact aligned with your Yang Ren direction? You could add some kind of landscaping feature (like a wall or hedge) to help buffer the qi flow of this alignment. You could also use a different entrance to your house if the actual front door is in the Yang Ren direction. The next photo shows a cul de sac with no house directly aligned with the end. There is also a Round-About which helps recirculate the qi away from a direct path.

Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Feng Shi Theory Blog Series