Feng Shui Owl

How To Apply Feng Shui On Book Cover Design

Even though feng shui is primarily used on home design, as audacious as it sounds, it can also be applied to book cover design as long as you have a good grasp of feng shui principles.

With the technology available today to end users and a changing structure of how work is conducted, more and more people are practicing self-publishing in the world of new media,

This means that unlike in the past, aspiring writers no longer have to kowtow to book publishers in order to distribute their books to the masses.

Digital ebooks have been all the rage in the last decade or so. And this has led a strong movement towards self-publishing. It also means that a lot of writers are taking on the task of designing their book covers themselves.

It’s not exactly that hard these days with software like Photoshop available all over the place. And since it is widely accepted that great book covers contribute to at least 50% of a book’s success.

If you believe in feng shui, the question begs…

How do you feng shui your book cover design?

What is your personal element?

The first thing you should do is determine what is your personal element. What in the world of metaphysics is the element that represents you as a person?

A mistake that I find many people make is to confuse Chinese zodiac signs with their personal element. That cannot be further away from reality.

For example just because you are born in the year of the metal pig does not mean that your personal element is metal.

In order to obtain your personal element you will have to refer to the Hsia calendar. It’s a pleasant surprise when I found that a whole major segment of it is published on Wikipedia. What is published stretches so far back that I cannot imagine any living person having their birth date omitted from the published segment on Wikipedia.

If for example, your birth day is 28 September 1986, you will find that under “HS of Day” is HS2. And according to the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches table, you can see that HS2 is “Wood”. Your personal element is therefore, Wood.

280982hs2

Once you have this piece of information, you should be able to tell what different elements represent to you on a personal level by referring to the elemental relationships table.

If we go back to the example of Wood as personal element, this means that Earth is the element that bring you wealth.

Assuming wealth and money is what you are after with your new book, then the colors of Earth will be best for you when designing your book cover.

Without going deeper into Bazi analysis, let’s just assume that wealth is good for you. I say this because your 8 characters might show that money will be harmful to you. Without doing a deep analysis, it’s impossible to determine which is which.

You get what I mean. Anyway, a lot of people would still want more money even if they realize that money is bad for them.

Since we are here, let’s also make a mental note that 1986 is the year of the fiery Fire Tiger.

If you don’t like your book cover looking like an orange, at least let an Earth color be the dominant color.

But surely color is not the only aspect of feng shui on a book cover?

Don’t get ahead of yourself, we are just getting started.

What is your Kua number?

The concept of the Kua number comes from the “8 House School of Thought” in feng shui. Although it’s application is much less dynamic compared to flying star feng shui, the Kua number is a useful tool for fine-tuning.

If your application of feng shui is advantageous in 2 different schools of thought, it can’t be a bad thing.

Going back to the previous example, let’s say the subject (you) is female. By working the equation for calculating Kua numbers, we get a Kua number of 1.

This generates the favorable directions of SE, E, S, N.

What is the flying star chart for your book?

Flying star feng shui is one of the most widely practiced by practitioners today because of how comprehensive and dynamic it is. Especially when fused with the 4 Pillars of Destiny (Bazi).

Without going into the details here, flying star feng shui basically generates a chart for a house based on the birth date of the house.

Since we are applying feng shui on your book, the chart generated will be used for your book. And since we are currently in the period of 8, we will use a chart from the period of 8.

Because you cannot generally set or measure a direction that you book is facing, we will go back to basics and use N2 as the facing. Meaning that we will use this N2 flying star natal chart.

As you can see, there is a double 8 water and mountain star at the sitting (South) of this chart. That’s where the best location is according to flying stars.

Putting it together

So far we have collated the following information from the subject:

  • Wood personal element
  • Kua number 1
  • Period of 8 N2 facing chart

I just noticed that this is as good as an example as you will find in any text book. And this really is coincidental. I’ve plucked the dates out of thin air and really didn’t expect everything to add up so nicely.

Title

You see, the double 8 at the South corresponds with South being a favorable direction for Kua number 1. And South being a direction that has a natural Fire elemental presence feeds Earth Which represents your Wealth.

This makes it the perfect area of your book cover to print it’s title. And coincidentally, this area corresponds with the top-center of the book cover.

fsbc1

The way this is going so far, even a Hollywood movie couldn’t have come up with a better script.

You can add subtitles or short descriptions in smaller fonts below the main title.

Author name

Since you are of a wood element, it would be best to put your name in a direction where wood resides. That means East or SouthEast.

But taking into account that your were born in the year of the Tiger which is right before NorthEast meets East, you can create a fusion of both these aspects by printing your name right across the area between NorthEast and East.

To further seed your personal element of Wood, you can also use squarish fonts so that your full author name will look like a perfect rectangle (a shape that represents Wood).

Shape of book

Since the shape representing Wood is rectangle, you might go the conventional route in going with a rectangle shape for your book cover.

But if wealth is your goal, you might want to give your book more of a squarish structure than rectangle because Earth is represented by squares. And Earth, according to your personal element (Wood) is what represents your wealth.

Let’s just go with a squarish shape for the book cover.

Color

In terms of color, you’d of course want to use a main color theme that is advantageous to you in terms of feng shui. This means that you should go with colors of Wood or Water.

At the same time, you might also want to use an Earthly color because of the wealth aspects.

Saying that. What you really want to avoid is using a Wood shaped book cover (rectangle) with an Earth color because of the tendency for Wood to attack Earth.

Conflict is not what you want. We seek harmony and balance in geomancy.

This is when you have to practice some practicality. If you are writing a gardening book with pictures of plants on it’s cover, it’s not wise to have a square shape for the book cover. This is because plants (Wood) is in direct conflict with squares (earth).

It’s better that you stick with rectangle shaped covers when using plants as pictures on the cover.

But if you are producing a book about gemstones (Earth), then it makes perfect sense to stick with a square shaped cover since there is no conflict.

Blending all 5 elements

Many feng shui masters and practitioners would totally remove the presence of Metal in every aspect of your life because Metal is the element that will “kill” you since your are of the self-element of Wood.

If you don’t know why Metal is hazardous to you, get familiar with your personal elemental representations.

In in my opinion, feng shui is all about balance and harmony. And you can only have balance if all 5 elements are present.

If for example, Metal is absent from your life, this means that there will be no outlet for Earth. Earth will only get stronger and stronger and could eventually explode.

Water–>Wood–>Fire–>Earth–>Empty

An absence of metal would also mean a lack of support for water element, which is the element feeding your personal element (Wood).

This means that I am for the notion that all elements should be present in your life… including your book cover.

But let’s say that you don’t want the presence of Metal at all. What you need to add to the book cover now is Water and Fire.

If you remember, I’ve previously mentioned where you could place your author name to bring recognition to yourself. Yet at the same time, the name will be sitting on a square (Earth) book cover which can cause conflict.

To harmonize this issue, place a Fire backing on your name to sit on. This 1 element placed between Wood and Earth will remove any conflict because Wood feeds fire, which in turn, nurtures Earth.

Further more, it would please the Fire Tiger present in this area.

fsbc2

This is the main issue that you should take note of.

And since we are on the topic of Fire, you might also want to add a tinge of red or a symbol of Fire at the South (top-center) of the book cover. Firstly, because this area has a Fire base. Secondly, the favorable mountain and water stars of double 8s are Earth based. Inserting a little Fire in this area is going to activate and supercharge these 2 stars.

Other than that, you can place any graphic that represents these 4 elements on the book cover.

Just take note that Water is present at the North of the book, which is located right at the bottom-center. That is what represents your resources. And from a big picture perspective, Water represents wealth in general. So you might want to place an important label or a call-to-action there to activate that sector.

And according to your Kua number of 1, this is also the Fu Wei sector that relates to academics. This means that if your book is more of an academic nature than commercial nature, all the more should you have something in this area.

Final words

All in all, you can decide whether or not to let feng shui into your life. But surely having the elements working in your favor is better than having them against you.

And also note that a huge portion of the success in your book also depends on how good your book really is. 😀

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