Which Direction and Climate Suit Your BaZi: Favorable Directions and Warm Versus Cool
"Should I build my career in the north or the south?" "Would I do well in the tropics?" BaZi has two answers to draw on: the directions of your favorable elements, and the climate preference set by Climate Adjustment. The first depends on where you start from; the second you feel every day once you live there, which usually makes it the more practical of the two.
Directions of the favorable elements
| Favorable element | Direction | Share whose favorable set includes it |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | East | 50.6% |
| Fire | South | 48.3% |
| Earth | Center (southwest, northeast) | 41.0% |
| Metal | West | 44.9% |
| Water | North | 51.0% |
Favorable elements usually come in a set of two or three, so most people have two or three directions to consider. Directions are measured from where you live now: for someone in London, east might mean the Continent; from Los Angeles, west means across the Pacific. They are an aid, not a verdict; the jobs, cost of living and people in a place matter far more. How favorable elements are worked out is on favorable elements.
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A favorable direction is not an Eight Mansions lucky direction
The two often get mixed up. The directions here come from the favorable elements of your BaZi chart and are about which way to head in work and life. Eight Mansions feng shui works out a "life trigram" from your birth year and pairs it with the facing of a house; it is about where the bed, door and desk go. One is about where the person goes, the other about how the house is arranged, and neither can stand in for the other.
Climate: more practical than direction
Climate Adjustment reads how warm or cold a chart runs. Going by the birth month and how much Fire and Water the chart holds, we sort each chart into cold, hot or roughly balanced:
| Your chart | Places that suit you better | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Runs cold and lacks Fire | Warm, sunny places | 11.6% |
| Runs cold but already has Fire | Slightly warm is enough; little difference | 14.7% |
| Runs hot and dry and lacks Water | Cool, humid places | 11.1% |
| Runs hot but already has Water | Slightly cool is enough; little difference | 16.1% |
| Roughly balanced | Almost anywhere | 46.5% |
In other words, about 22.7% of people have a clear climate preference. Qing, on the overview, was born at the start of winter with a cold chart short of Fire, so she will be more comfortable somewhere warm; Ming’s chart is balanced, so climate is not something he needs to worry about. The details of Climate Adjustment are on Climate Adjustment.
Born in the Southern Hemisphere? Your favorable elements may differ
The solar terms were set by the seasons of the Northern Hemisphere. For someone born in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland or São Paulo, the Wu month is actually winter and the Zi month is high summer. Our approach is to cast the four pillars as usual and only reverse warm and cold for Climate Adjustment, so the same chart can have different favorable elements depending on the hemisphere of birth.
How we counted: our engine cast one chart for every day from 1960 to 2005 (birth hour drawn at random, alternating male and female), 16,802 charts in all; the timing figures cover the ten years 2026 to 2035. This describes how chart structures are distributed; it says nothing about whether any real person will move or emigrate.
Take Qing: born at the start of a Northern Hemisphere winter, her favorable elements are EarthMetalFire. Born at the same moment in the Southern Hemisphere, it would have been early summer, with no need for Fire to warm the chart, and her favorable elements would be only EarthMetal.
Note that this is about where you were born. Moving to the other hemisphere later does not change your BaZi. The climate you live in does shape how you feel day to day, though, and that is an adjustment of environment: someone who needs Fire living somewhere warm, someone who needs Water living somewhere cool and humid, is living with the grain of their chart.
Two worked examples: favorable direction, Eight Mansions trigram and hemisphere of birth
Reading direction and climate breaks into four steps: find which elements are favorable and turn them into directions; check Climate Adjustment for a clear warm-or-cool preference; confirm which hemisphere you were born in; and only then weigh up work and living conditions. One of the people below shows what to do when a favorable direction and an Eight Mansions lucky direction point opposite ways; the other shows how to re-read a chart for a Southern Hemisphere birth.
Pinrui: his favorable direction points north, where Eight Mansions puts his worst direction
Pinrui | Born May 15, 1998, Chen hour (7–9 a.m.), male
- His baseline: Pinrui is a weak Ren Water Day Master; favorable MetalWater, unfavorable WoodFireEarth. Born in the Si month at the start of summer, his chart runs hot and dry and is short of Water.
- Favorable directions: Metal points west and Water north. He lives in Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, so north means Tainan, Taichung and on up to Taipei; going abroad, Japan and Korea also lie to the north.
- Climate: a hot, dry chart short of Water puts him among the roughly 11.1% of people better suited to cool, humid places. Southern Taiwan is hot most of the year, the more draining environment for him; if the jobs on offer are comparable, the north, or somewhere cooler, would be easier to live in.
- Eight Mansions trigram: as a man born in 1998, his life trigram is Kun (West group). Kun’s four lucky directions are northeast, northwest, west and southwest; north is its Jue Ming (Total Loss) direction.
- How the two fit together: the favorable direction answers "which way should I head in work and life"; Eight Mansions answers "which way should the house face, and where do the bed, door and desk go." Building a career in the north does not go against Eight Mansions; once he has a new home, he can arrange the rooms for a Kun trigram. Each system covers its own ground, and he does not have to choose between them.
Yizhen: born in Melbourne, so read her chart for the Southern Hemisphere
Yizhen | Born June 20, 1991, Wei hour (1–3 p.m.), female, in Melbourne
- Birthplace: Yizhen was born in Melbourne and moved to Taiwan with her family in her early teens. June, her birth month, is winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
- Read for the Northern Hemisphere: the Wu month is high summer, the chart runs hot and dry and is short of Water, her favorable elements are EarthMetalWater, and she would be read as suited to cool, humid places. Our lookup tool calculates for the Northern Hemisphere by default, so this is the result it gives her unless she ticks “Born in the Southern Hemisphere”.
- Read for her actual hemisphere: recalculated for the Southern Hemisphere, the same chart is roughly balanced between warm and cold; her favorable elements narrow to EarthMetal, Water drops out, and she has no clear climate preference.
- How to read it: her favorable directions are the center and west (Earth and Metal), and north is nothing she needs to pursue. Whether she lives in Taipei or Kaohsiung, climate is not the deciding factor; jobs and her circle of friends and family matter more.
- Knock-on effects: when the favorable elements change, so do the grades of each year. Read for the north, 2032 (Ren-Zi) is a favorable year for her; read for the south it is only neutral, and 2031 (Xin-Hai) and 2033 (Gui-Chou) slip from favorable to leaning favorable. When she checks the year table on the timing page, she should tick “Born in the Southern Hemisphere” so the table uses her Southern Hemisphere favorable elements.
Quick reference: using direction and climate when you have to choose
Direction and climate are aids, but when the options are close and hard to separate, they give you one more angle. Match your chart and the choice in front of you against the table:
| Your chart | Weighing up | Better approach | Settle first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs cold and lacks Fire, or hot and dry and lacks Water | Two cities with similar job prospects | Let climate lead: warm and sunny if you lack Fire, cool and humid if you lack Water | What each place is like in winter and in summer; a season living there tells you most |
| Roughly balanced | Torn between several places | Neither direction nor climate needs to decide it; go back to pay, cost of living and distance from family and friends | Your own everyday preferences, such as minding the cold or the damp |
| The place you want is not in a favorable direction | A very good job offer in hand | Put the job first; favorable elements can be supported in other ways, such as the kind of work and daily habits | Whether the job itself belongs to a favorable-element field; see putting the five elements to work |
| Earth (the center) is favorable | Staying in your home region, or building a life elsewhere | Traditionally, putting down deep roots where you are, or heading southwest or northeast, both go with the grain; no need to travel far for a direction | Whether the reason to leave is the direction, or a genuinely better opportunity |
| Born in the Southern Hemisphere | Using our tool or a standard chart calculator | Re-read warm and cold and your favorable elements for the Southern Hemisphere before thinking about direction and climate | On our tools, tick “Born in the Southern Hemisphere”; most standard calculators assume the north, so check them against this page |
| Rearranging your home | Which way the bed, desk and front door face | That is Eight Mansions territory: arrange by life trigram and the facing of the house | Do not use favorable directions to place furniture |
Where direction and climate readings often go wrong
Fire among your favorable elements means you should move to the tropics.
Fire in the favorable set is not always there to warm the chart. Some people need Fire because the Day Master needs support, or to keep another element in check, and then the climate has little to do with it. Only people whose Climate Adjustment calls for Fire and whose chart lacks it (about 11.6%) feel a warm climate directly. For climate, look at Climate Adjustment, not at whether Fire is on your favorable list.
You should never even visit the direction of an unfavorable element.
An unfavorable direction is only less recommended for settling and building a life, and it weighs far less than work and living conditions. Business trips, holidays and family visits are unaffected. Fire (south) is among Pinrui’s unfavorable elements, and he can still head south to Pingtung on business or take a holiday in Southeast Asia.
A balanced chart means it does not matter where you live, so there is nothing to consider.
Balanced only means your BaZi has no marked climate preference (true of about 46.5% of people); it does not mean your everyday preferences do not count. Minding the cold or the damp, liking or disliking rain: these real feelings still deserve a place in the decision.
A straight word: BaZi shows tendencies; whether to move is a life decision
Whether to go abroad, and where, really turns on work, visas, family, savings and language. What BaZi can add is a reminder of how restless you are by nature, what kind of place you tend to feel at home in, and which years are more likely to bring a move, so you have one more thing to weigh. Everything on this site is for reference and entertainment and is no substitute for professional immigration, financial or legal advice.
Where would you feel at home?
Enter your birth date and sex to see your favorable directions, the climate that suits you, and which of the next ten years are likely to bring a move.
Favorable directions and climate: FAQ
Is my favorable direction measured from where I was born or where I live now?
From where you live now. Direction is only a minor aid; the climate, jobs and living conditions of a place matter more than the compass point.
Are favorable directions the same as Eight Mansions lucky directions?
No. Favorable directions come from the favorable elements of your BaZi chart and are about where to head. Eight Mansions lucky directions come from the life trigram of your birth year and the facing of a house, and are about how a home is arranged. One cannot stand in for the other.
If I move to the Southern Hemisphere after I am born, does my BaZi change?
No. Your BaZi and favorable elements are fixed by the moment of birth; moving changes only your surroundings. Someone who needs Fire living somewhere warm, or someone who needs Water living somewhere cool and humid, is living with the grain of their chart.