The main doors to houses and commercial property used to align properly with the face of the building or facing wall.
Anything other than that can make passer-bys wonder what the heck is going on.
I remember a period of time when walking along the street when I first encountered a weirdly tilted door configuration that I felt it must have been a patch or remedy for serious mistakes made by a contractor.
However when these types of doors became more and more widespread, it became obvious that there was a clear intent for such designs by property owners.
It was only when I started delving into the science of feng shui years later did I fully comprehend the logic of what’s going on.
There is even a famous feng shui story that has become a folklore of some sort about a feng shui grandmaster, reverent Hong Choon, who applied the angled door technique for Hyatt Regency hotel in Singapore and turned around it’s fortunes almost immediately.
Angled door
The tilted door I’m referring to is of course, the castle gate door.
These are main front doors that are angled about 45° to the line of the shop or house facing.
This is sort of a feng shui hack to remedy buildings with an inauspicious facing direction, which results in an inauspicious main door facing direction.
This is because homes and especially retail shops have front doors that align properly with the facing line.
As we cannot rotate a building towards an auspiciously lucky facing direction, angling the door towards a good direction enables an owner to tap on his or her positive energy from good directions without having to surrender to bad luck emitting from bad feng shui.
Before we go on, do be mindful that there are feng shui concepts centered around the main door as the focal point.
Just because flying stars and 8 mansions have more exposure doesn’t mean that other schools of thought are useless.
Science behind castlegate
When a homeowner ends up with a natal chart that does not have a good star combination at the facing palace, but has a prosperous water feature at it’s front left or front right, then the castle gate technique can be applied to see if the house would be able to efficiently tap onto that auspicious chi.
To assess the suitability of the house for castle gate application, one would need to run some calculations using replacement stars.
For example, a house facing NW1 in period 8 would have the following natal chart.
Let’s say the front door is at the NW1 area facing NW1 and there is a beautiful landscape water feature at the north which is occupied by water star 5.
To evaluate whether castle gate can be applied, we take the base star 4 which is at the north sector, check it’s flying sequence to map out the stars at the north. We end up with this.
As can be observed from the image above the star 8 now occupies the north palace. It would become the resident water star of this sector and replace the current star 5 when castlegate is applied. Because 8 is the timely star with the most auspicious chi, then the castlegate concept is acceptable since it enables the property to draw auspicious energy from a water feature at it’s side instead of it’s facing. So the main door is tilted towards the north direction to apply castlegate.
If we use the same method to derive the replacement water star for the west sector, we get star 4. So water at the west is not useful for castlegate application.
It should be mentioned that some feng shui masters would narrow down the degrees in which a door can be tilted based on the position of the water feature and it’s combination sub-sector at the door area. This combination can be a hetu combination of elements between hexagram sectors identified from Xuan Kong Da Gua (玄空大卦), sum of 10 combination, same element combination, etc.
In the case of the previous example, the specific direction to tilt the door can be towards N1 according to these specific concepts.
I don’t want force feed these different concepts into you. If you really want to understand this complex theory, it is best that you read the classical text to castle gate and come to your own conclusions of how it should be put into practice.
Some feng shui practitioners even apply it using 8 mansions feng shui. Most feng shui enthusiasts should have at least heard about this school of thought.
8 mansions feng shui is mainly about directions. According to it, an individual has an auspicious direction which can feed him with overwhelming good fortune.
More about 8 mansions feng shui can be read here.
If for example a business owner has a kua number 2 and has a storefront facing north which is not a desirable direction, constructing a main door at a 45° angle can swing the door facing towards northeast, which is a personally prosperous direction of Sheng Chi.
Then he would be set up to harvest wealth luck enhancing positive energy.
Saying that, the angle don’t have to be exactly 45°. The figure of 45 is often mentioned because it is easier for people who don’t know feng shui understand that there is an angle to the door configuration. It can be any angle as long as it ends up facing one’s favorable direction that has been determined.
If you have full control of the immediate external area outside the door, then consider landscaping to reinforce the new direction of the door.
For example, building a pathway that leads to the new door via the new direction.
Sometimes, property owners intend to setup a castle gate front door but find that it can be an eyesore.
In this case, the angled door can be constructed in other areas of the premises that blend in better with the floor plan.
Water
Be mindful that the castle gate water theory is only applicable for doors to amend it’s facing to the left or right.
This means that if a property is facing north, the castle gate door can only be adjusted towards northeast or northwest. And if the facing is south, it can only be amended to face southeast or southwest.
When this feng shui hack is applied to a property, many homeowners and business operators don’t realize that the job is not complete.
To harness the full potency of the castle gate door in feng shui, the presence of water is required at the directional area where the door is now facing.
Without it, it would be like keeping a pitbull as a pet for protection, but wearing a muzzle. It might still scare away criminals, but when push comes to shove, it’s not really going to do the owner any good.
It would also be favorable if according to flying star natal charts of the property, that there are favorable or timely stars where the door is facing.
When done this way, take note that the new configuration would only enable the property to enjoy good luck during the reigning age of the flying stars period. It must be reviewed when the period changes. This is especially so when we factor in the indirect spirit.
Remember that in feng shui, water can refer to both real actual water and virtual water in the form of “activities”.
If there is a lack of water features at the castle gate door’s facing like a pond or fountain, then it should ideally face an area with “traffic”.
Because identifying “traffic” can be heavily down to judgment, I will refrain from giving examples in case you get it wrong.
In the absence of water, it is often observed that property owners use the placement of wealth luck items at the entrance as an alternative.
Some of these items include:
- Aquariums
- Jade plant
- Water features
- Landscape paintings that include water
- etc
If you have a house or store with an undesirable facing and remedies are not working, then the last resort might be to contemplate the possibility of incorporating the unique castle gate door that faces a favorable direction.
Remember that the ideal scenario is to have a house with the facing you want.
These feng shui hacks should only be applied as a last resort.
