เครื่องรางกระจกปากั้ว (กระจกแปดทิศ)Bagua mirror八卦鏡

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.

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.

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.