Amulet Atlas

amuletsBagua mirror八卦鏡

said bā guà jìng

also: Pa Kua mirror · eight trigram mirror · feng shui mirror

amuletChinaChinaHong KongTaiwanconfidence mediumneeds checking

An octagonal or circular plaque with the eight trigrams set around a mirror at its centre. The mirror is flat, convex or concave, and which one it is decides what the object claims to do. It is screwed or hung above a front door or a window, facing out. It resembles a luopan, the feng shui compass, but it is not an instrument — nothing is read off it.

cited

Chinese 八卦 bāguà, 'eight trigrams', + 鏡 jìng, 'mirror'
A trigram is three stacked lines, each broken or unbroken for yin or yang; two states across three lines give eight figures, which is where the eight comes from. cited

When

undated here; hung now still carried cited

Perioddescended from bronze Taoist mirrors; the household form is modern and undated in the source
How the date is knownnobody here could date it
NoteThe source read gives no years at all — not for the trigrams, not for the bronze mirrors, not for the modern remedy. Charms carrying the eight trigrams are separately attested on Chinese coin charms from the Tang and Song, which the numismatic source describes by dynasty rather than by year.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

FormMirror
Made ofGlass · Brass · Copper and bronze · Wood · Plastic and resin
GoesAt the door · On a wall · At the till · On the roof
Made bymanufactured and sold ready to hang; installed by the householder
It saysthe eight trigrams of the bagua, set around the glass (Han)
Retiredno — it is kept
NoteThe three variants are the point of the object: flat to reflect, convex to disperse, concave to converge or absorb. No measurement is published in the source read.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

The story

The thing it answers is a direction, not a person. In feng shui, sharp corners of neighbouring buildings and an open road running at a house count as sources of poison-arrows — Sha Qi, 煞氣 — and a bagua mirror is hung to deal with the arrow rather than the archer. A flat mirror is held to reflect it, a convex one to disperse it, a concave one to converge or absorb it, and so to alter the feng shui of the residence.

Modern bagua mirrors are described as evolved from ancient bronze-cast versions used by Taoist masters to perform Mirror Techniques, 鏡術, said to reveal or destroy evil spirits, or even to overcome natural calamities. The household version is the cheap end of that: an inexpensive, often self-administered quick fix to a specific feng shui concern.

Which is exactly where the trouble is. Whatever the mirror sends back goes in the direction the mirror faces, so pointing one at a neighbour's home is generally considered offensive and is a feng shui taboo — and the do-it-yourself nature of the object makes it easy to misuse for a private vendetta. Conflicts caused by offensive installations are well known in dense Chinese communities such as Hong Kong, and feng shui mirror feuds have been parodied in popular culture. Inference — this is one of the few charms in this atlas whose recorded quarrels are between neighbours rather than between believers and sceptics; the argument is not whether it works but where it is aimed.

cited

How it is made and carried

Bought ready-made and mounted by the householder, above a door or a window, facing the corner or the road that is the problem. No consecration is described in the source read, and no specialist is required — which is the difference between this and the bronze mirrors of the Taoist masters it is said to descend from.

cited

Now

Sold in hardware shops, feng shui shops and online across the Chinese-speaking world as of 2026, in plastic and wood as often as in metal. A mirror over a doorway is also read by neighbours, which is why some cities treat their appearance as news.

inference

What this is near

motifThe mirrorthe sign family it belongs to: a surface that sends a thing back where it came fromparallelTolithe steppe cousin — a metal mirror worn on a shaman's body as armour, where this one is bolted to a buildingtraditionFulu — Taoist talismanic craftthe tradition behind the Taoist mirror techniques it is said to descend fromkinChinese charm cointhe pocket-sized carrier of the same eight trigrams, cast in bronzekinFu talismanthe written remedy at the same doorway, where this is the optical onepracticeHanging at the doorthe practice: a charm fixed to a building, aimed outward, guarding a threshold and not a bodyparallelHex signPennsylvania's painted answer on the same part of a building, argued over in the same wayparallelNazarthe other thing hung facing out over a door, which answers a look rather than a cornercontrastPing'an futhe portable Taiwanese charm for the same household, renewed yearly while this stays up

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

kinChinese charm cointhe other object that puts the eight trigrams to work, on a wall rather than in a pocketkinFu talismanthe other Taoist fixture at a doorway, working by reflection where this works by writingparallelHex signthe other painted geometric disc in this atlas fixed to the outside of a building, and a useful comparison because nobody argues about what that one is forcontrastPing'an futhe fixed version at the same door: this one rides in a pocket, that one is screwed above the lintelparallelTolithe Chinese neighbour doing the same optical job from a doorway, on a building rather than on a bodycarriesFulu — Taoist talismanic craftthe door-piece whose techniques the tradition is credited with, and the one household object here that works by reflection rather than by writingkinThe square holehung on the same walls and sold from the same shelf, and appearing on lock charms as a designcarried-byThe mirrorthe Chinese object itself — trigrams round a disc, fixed above a doorparallelHanging at the doorthe Chinese door fitting that answers the same question about what arrives at an entrancecontrastThe eye everywherethe case this read declines to claim: a parallel with no documented line back to Sumeria

Where this came from

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

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