Methodology
How we research and verify
Feng shui writing online is hard to check. Sites rarely say where a rule came from, which school teaches it, or how a calculator arrived at its answer. This page describes what we do instead, in enough detail that you can audit it. Every page is published under the name of an editor, Corey Kong, who is accountable for it.
Calculations are open and tested
Every number this site produces comes from code you can read. The calculators are not black boxes and not third-party widgets; the whole site, including its algorithms and their test suites, is public at github.com/Coreyk888/FengShuiSignal.
Each method is checked against charts published independently of us, because an internally consistent algorithm can still be consistently wrong. As of this writing:
- Kua numbers are verified against published kua charts across the 1900s and 2000s, including the cases that break naive calculators: the Li Chun year boundary and the substitution rule for kua 5.
- Annual flying stars are checked against published annual charts for 2018 and 2020 through 2027.
- Monthly flying stars are checked cell by cell against published monthly charts, including August 2026 and December 2026.
- Natal flying star charts are checked against the known Period 8 results, among them the fact that exactly six facings produce a wang shan wang shui chart and that Period 9 produces none at all.
- Bagua overlays are checked in both the classical compass and the BTB front-door placements.
Five test suites run before every deployment, alongside a build check that fails on broken internal links, missing structured data, or a page with no route in from elsewhere on the site.
Where the claims come from
We work outward from primary sources and label what we are using. Classical texts come first: the Zangshu for qi and siting, the Ba Zhai Ming Jing for Eight Mansions, the Yangzhai Sanyao for the three essentials of a dwelling, Shen Shi Xuan Kong Xue for flying stars. Academic sinology comes next, principally Ole Bruun's history of the practice and Joseph Needham on classical Chinese natural philosophy. Contemporary practitioner literature is used last and identified as such, since it is where lineage-specific innovations enter.
We cite sources we have actually consulted, and we do not attach URLs to works we have only seen referenced. Where a page cites research rather than tradition, the citation carries enough detail to look up: author, journal, year, and DOI.
School disagreements are disclosed, not resolved
Feng shui is not one system. The classical compass schools, the Form school, and the American Black Sect lineage answer the same questions differently, and a great deal of the confusion in English-language feng shui comes from writers who mix them without noticing.
Our rule is to name the split rather than quietly pick a winner. The bagua page explains that compass and BTB placement give different answers for the same room. The kua calculator states that it uses the Li Chun boundary and flags the birthdays where a Chinese New Year lineage would disagree. The flying star pages note where Period 9 practitioners now dispute the standing of the wealth star. When we do have to choose a convention to compute with, we say which one and why.
Tradition and evidence are kept apart
"The tradition says" and "studies show" are different claims, and we never let one borrow the authority of the other. Traditional material is attributed to the tradition. Research is cited only where it exists, which for feng shui is a narrow band, mostly environmental psychology on clutter, daylight, nature views, and seating preference. Where a popular claim has no support, we say so plainly rather than hedging. Our evidence review sets out the full position.
We do not promise outcomes, and we do not publish content that treats a home arrangement as a way to obtain wealth, health, or love.
Corrections
We expect to be wrong occasionally, particularly on transliteration, lineage attribution, and the history of specific texts. Corrections take priority over new writing. If you find an error, write to admin@fengshuisignal.com with the page and the passage. Substantive fixes change the page's updated date, and the full edit history of every page is visible in the public repository.
Independence
Heberey LLC publishes this site. We sell nothing, take no sponsorships, accept no guest posts or paid links, and have no affiliate relationships as of this writing. Our tools run entirely in your browser and transmit nothing, so we could not build a profile of you from a birth date even if we wanted to. If any of that changes, it will be disclosed on the affected pages and on the disclaimer page.