Feng shui is an ancient science that has its roots in the Chinese way of viewing the Universe, where all things on Earth are categorized into five basic elements, and take on implications of positive or negative energy. This is termed chi. and it can have either yin or yang attributes.

Feng shui, is literally translated to mean wind and water It is the science of selecting a living environment where the elements and the energies are in harmonious balance, thereby bringing the good life to those who reside within that environment.

Feng shui is also an art - a skill borne of experience and common sense - the skill of arranging one's immediate living and work space to further strengthen this vital balance and harmony.

A certain amount of mysticism surrounds the practice of feng shui. Understanding its many precepts requires the acceptance of fundamental theories about the Universe which may seem alien in the context of modern day perceptions of the way the world works. Descriptions of landscapes and environments are shrouded in symbolic representations. And metaphors that embrace classical and mythical Chinese references to animals, elements and the intangible forces of yin and yang energies reflect the ancient roots of this science.

The theory of feng shui may be studied by going to source books that have survived, but the practical applications of feng shui journeyed down the centuries by word of mouth, passed on from generation to generation - thereby giving it connotations of superstition. Thus while the philosophy of feng shui is simple, and the promise of feng shui is meaningful abundance, prosperity and happiness, its practice in a modern context requires an understanding of its fundamentals, access to its various formulas, and sufficient experience that allow for meaningful and correct interpretations of its guidelines and practice.

 

 

The Chinese people have always believed in feng shui except o those whose knowledge of, and exposure to it is limited, feng shui is usually practiced as superstition. In ancient China only the privileged classes had access to feng shui knowledge. Feng shui was the exclusive domain of the Imperial family and the mandarins who enjoyed the emperors patronage There are even tales of now emperors would go out of their way to obscure the old texts thereby preventing those who might be a threat to the dynasty from practicing feng shui The first Ming emperor it was speculated decreed that the kingdom be flooded with books that contained misleading theories and wrong guidelines on feng shui. Centuries later when Mao Tze Tung became the new emperor of China, he too believed in feng shui. Mao was obsessed by the fall of previous emperors and spent a lifetime studying the Twenty Four Annals of the Dynasties, and throughout his reign, Mao banned the practice of feng shui in China. Even as feng shui waned in China, Chinese who had fled the motherland and settled in faraway countries continued to keep the practice alive. Feng shui flourished in Taiwan. When Chiang Kai Shek fled the mainland, he took with him thousands of old texts on feng shui. Many feng shui Masters also went with Chiang, and they continued to put their skills to work - in the process, benefiting the feng shui of Chiang’s regime, as well as the island’s business community. It is surely not a coincidence that Taiwan is so prosperous today!

Feng shui also continued to flourish in Hong Kong, where many Chinese refugees settled Today, Hong Kong has become the unofficial capital of feng shui, and Chinese residents here consider feng shui a way of life. Even the first post 1997 Chinese Governor of Hong Kong - CH Tung - has indicated he will not move into either the colonial Governor’s mansion or the colonial Governor’s old office because he believes both locations suffer from inauspicious feng shui! Like the true Chinese he is, his new office will he checked by the feng shui master to ensure luck is on his side in the difficult days ahead …

Probably the most exciting development of recent years has been the reappearance of feng shui in China. The practice has been brought back by overseas Chinese now investing in business ventures in the new China. Whole townships and property projects spearheaded by Hong Kong Chinese for instance, now reveal evidence of the feng shui man’s inputs!

 

Another exciting development has been the growing acceptance and popularity of feng shui amongst Western educated Chinese now living in the Chinatowns of the United States, Canada, Australia, UK, Europe and South East Asia. In places where there are significant pockets of an overseas Chinese population – like Singapore and Malaysia, feng shui continues to grow in popularity. Many are eagerly rediscovering the wonderful promise of a practice that is part of their cultural heritage.

And in tandem with this growing acceptance of feng shui amongst overseas Chinese has been another equally exciting phenomena, the increasing awareness of, and acceptance accorder to, feng shui by the other communities of the world.

Feng shui in the West started as part of the New Age movement that focused on the totality of the mind, body and spirit of mankind.

New Age sought out the esoteric teachings of the East, and in the process discovered the great promise and potential of feng shui. In recent years feng shui has gone beyond New Age and its now enjoying growing mainstream appeal … thus has feng shui crossed the great waters to all corners of the globe. Today this wonderful science is accessible to everyone, and those who practice it have discovered that living in harmony with their personal environments can indeed bring great abundance, wonderful opportunities, good health, personal happiness and even serious wealth and prosperity into their lives.

 

 

While feng shui promises much in terms of bringing material and physical well being to those who arrange their living and work environments according to its precepts, it is not magic.

Feng shui is not a spiritual practice which creates miracles. It does bring overnight success. It does not change a person’s life situation immediately.

Feng shui works according to the quality of the energies that surround any living or work space. Those who would promise instant wealth, striking the lottery and creating immediate gratification do not truly understand the philosophy of feng shui.

Feng shui cannot create overall good fortune on its own. What it can do is create favorable energy around your home and your office so that when bad luck strikes, it tempers the ill fortune and reduces the loss, making things easier to bear. And when one is going through a time of good fortune according to one’s fate or destiny, then beneficial feng shui enhances the good fortune – bringing greater good luck than if there had been bad feng shui.

This is based on the philosophy of tien, ti and ren – the Chinese words for heaven, earth and mankind. This is the trinity of luck.

There is heaven luck which one is born with. Heaven luck or tien chai is not within any one’s control. No one has dominion over the circumstances of his or her birth, nor of the good and bad periods of one’s life. This is why all the great cultures of the world have divination methods that attempt to read one’s fate and destiny based on birth charts and other methods of fortune telling. This is why prayer is so powerful, and why religion is such a vital part of life’s existence.

Divine help from heaven is not under mankind’s control and it is not to be confused with feng shui.
But earth luck, ti chai is within our control. Earth luck is the luck that comes from the environment and this gets strengthened when feng shui of one’s surroundings is auspicious.

Viewed within this context, feng shui takes on significant perspective, for if earth luck is within one’s control – and indeed, we can actively create good feng shui in our homes and offices – then positively doing something to improve our personal environments must surely and significantly illuminate our life’s luck. Feng shui becomes then a vital component of the circumstances of one’s being, for it addresses that part o our destiny over which we can exercise control.

Feng shui luck brings opportunities, improves chances of success, enhances our living condition and creates peace and goodwill in our relationships.

But feng shui luck reaches its maximum potential only when accompanied by equally strong and excellent mandkind luck - ren chai - and this, as the name suggests, is also within our control.

Thus while having good feng shui brings opportunities for advancement and the promise of higher incomes, if one does not seize the opportunity, or work at complementing one’s propitious fortune with good old fashioned hard work, a positive attitude and a determined outlook, all of which are components of mankind luck, then all your good feng shui get squandered! Mankind luck is the luck you create yourself!

 

 

Feng shui practice can be applied to almost every facet of the living and working condition. It has to do with enhancing the energies of the surrounding environment as well as the immediate living and work space. It functions on the premise that if one lives – breathes, sleeps, sits, eats, and works – surrounded by healthy vibrant energy, then one will be enveloped by an aura of good vibrations that attract excellent good fortune. On the other hand if one is shrouded by bad energy, dead energy, killing energy … then the environment brings grave misfortunes.

Good luck comes in a variety of different ways, and encompass all the physical, mental and spiritual aspirations of mankind. Bad luck also comes in different guises and run the gamut from ill health to loss to missing opportunities, to being plagued by injury, failure and betrayal. Enjoying good feng shui gives you a very serious edge over your competitors. Suffering from bad feng shui places you at an acute disadvantage. Feng shui principles should be put to use in your home and in your place of work. If you are in business, it should be applied to your office, your retail and branch outlets, your factories, and your warehouses. If you are a career person, feng shui should be activated at your desk, and each time you undertake an important assignment.

 

 

Your home can be a bungalow, a town house, an apartment, or a single room, shared with someone or at college. Your home can be rented or owned. It can be temporary or permanent. Any space where you retire to at the end of each day for rest, relaxation and rejuvenation should offer you the benefits of an auspicious and harmonious flow of energy. When your home enjoys good feng shui, you will be wrapped with vibrant and revitalizing energy.

Each of the rooms in your home can benefit from feng shui – the public areas like living rooms and the dining rooms, as well as the private areas like family and bed rooms. Layout, orientations, shapes, color schemes, placement of furniture, decorative objects and paintings – all add to the totality of the whole. How to put them all together to directly benefit the residents is what feng shui applications is about.

The best way to go about it is to take a systematic approach, in so doing, it is necessary to first understand at least the basic fundamentals and concepts of feng shui. Practice feng shui awareness and develop a solutions oriented attitude. Remember that there are practical and inexpensive remedies to most feng shui problems, and it is seldom necessary to resort to drastic expensive measures.

One can apply a combination of the various school of feng shui. Do not be surprised by the multitude of feng shui guidelines that seem proliferate in the market place today. Different masters may offer different recommendations depending on where and how they acquired their knowledge. Remember that amongst the Chinese, different dialect groups take different approaches to the practice.

When in doubt go back to basics, and apply a healthy dose of common sense. Do not confuse the set of guidelines that apply to the Form school with those associated with the Compass school. The approaches adopted by both are completely divergent. Nevertheless, neither schools can be ignored, and both depend on the fundamental concepts for interpretations. So focus on developing a working knowledge of the fundamental concepts. With practice you can do your own fen shui.

Historical Perspectives

In the old days, feng shui enjoyed immense royal patronage. Emperors were particularly concerned about the orientation of imperial burial grounds. The view was held that the fortunes of the living were largely determined by the quality of ancestral feng shui, and China is full of legends and village tales that describe in lyrical terms, the graves of the fathers of founding emperors like Chu Yuan Chuan, who founded the Ming dynasty, or of Sun Yat Sen, the man who became the president of China around the turn of the century. Visitors to Beijing can, if they wish, motor to the Northern outskirts of the city to view Ming tombs which were constructed according to strict feng shui guidelines.

In more recent times it has also been speculated that both Mao Tze Tung and Deng Xiao Ping owed their rise to power to the most special orientation of their respective ancestors’ graves.

Designing ancestral graves according to feng shui is a practice that is still popular in Taiwan where wealthy families go to great lengths not only to bury their dead in an auspicious orientation, but also ensure that graves sites are properly maintained and guarded. In particular, they make certain that the drainage and water flows are always auspicious. Living patriarchs of prominent families also select their burial plot in advance to ensure that family fortunes stay intact, and that descendants continue to bring honor to the family name. This practice is also discreetly followed by the rich Chinese of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

In times past, feng shui also featured strongly in the planning of towns & cities. Canton’s prosperity was due to its propitious location on the Pearl river delta, while Shanghai’s famous bund was believed to have brought great wealth to the metropolis. Hong Kong itself at the start of the century was not more than a barren rock, but with proper feng shui observance by the local population, and aided by the excellent orientations of its harbor the colony has continued to prosper.

The practice of feng shui in today’s world differs substantially from its historical perspectives. To start with, feng shui today is freely available to everyone. Feng shui is used by rich and poor alike, as a result of which the practice is applied to individual residences and work places, and by individuals.
Secondly feng shui today is being practiced in a world that is far different from that of its origins.

Because the physical landscape of the world has changed so much, the practice of feng shui today represents a great deal of adaptation of old precepts. The growth of cities and the popularity of apartment living in an urban setting has caused a certain amount of reinterpretation of the old texts. New meanings have thus been attributed to old metaphors. Thus dragons and tigers, turtles and phoenixes are superimposed onto a cityscape for purposes of interpreting landscape and form school feng shui in a modern metropolis.

 

 

Highways have been described as rivers while city roads become purveyors of chi flows. Skyscrapers and large building are now regarded as mountains and elevated landforms, and so become symbolic of one of the celestial creatures – with their shapes determining what kind of element they are categorized as. Making this leap in interpretation requires careful application of the theories that make up the basis and the historical context of feng shui applications. Once again therefore, it becomes necessary to refer back to the underlying fundamental concepts upon which all the schools of feng shui, and all its compass formulas are based. It is necessary to always bear this in mind.

 

In the old days, feng shui was extensively applied to yin dwellings, basically ancestral burial grounds. The textbooks on feng shui treat yin feng shui as a subject that is separate and different from yang feng shui. Symbols and reference points for the purposes of calculations differ for these two types of dwellings.

The feng shui that is referred to in all our website is yang feng shui and are applicable only to yang dwellings – or house of the living. This is not to say that yin feng shui is no longer practiced today. In Taiwan it remains a very important dimension of the feng shui that is practiced by many of its prominent families. Ancestral burial grounds for the older generation of families, are usually purchased long before their demise, with the grave of the family patriarch receiving the most careful attention. This is because the fortunes of the descendants is said to be substantially affected by the feng shui of the immediate ancestor’s grave.

Yin feng shui is said to particularly affect the male descendants of the family. Female descendants are less affected by ancestral burial grounds. Nevertheless, because one has little control over the actual orientation of most graves in a modern cemetery, I have always advocated that to be on the safe side, it might be better not to have a grave at all for one’s ancestor. Especially since the alternative – cremation – is both respectable and acceptable. According to feng shui experts, the effect on descendants luck is totally neutral – neither good nor bad, when the patriarch is cremated. This approach allows us peace of mind when we are forced to decide how we should bury our dead. This also puts the focus squarely on yang dwellings, which is far more meaningful, and easy to do.

 

 

All of the feng shui guidelines and tips contained in this website pertain to yang dwellings or houses of the living. This distinction is important to note since the basic tool used in all the recommendations given are based on the Later Heaven arrangement of trigrams in the Pa Kua which differs substantially from the Early Heaven arrangement of trigrams.

A second reason for making this distinction is to draw the reader’s attention to the intrinsic difference between yin and yang energies. Houses of the living are deemed to be yang because yang energy represents life, activity, movement and growth. Yin energy on the other hand, suggests stillness, silence, and death. When applying feng shui to yang dwellings therefore, it is vital to understand that yang influences should dominate, though never to the extent that yin energies are completely absent.

Understanding the difference between yin and yang feng shui enables the amateur practitioner to understand why the experts always recommend against siting one’s home within the vicinity of buildings that have yin dominated energies. Places like hospitals, prisons, cemeteries, abattoirs, slaughter houses and so forth generate too much yin energy, which creates the kind of vibrations that are entirely unsuitable for yang dwellings. They are thus to be avoided.

Experts also warn against living in buildings built on land which previously housed these places, since the yin energies there previously, are believed to continue to linger. Hence when looking for a suitable new home, it is always a good idea to investigate the recent history of the site upon which your new home will be located. Avoid locations where death or killing at some time in the recent past was a regular occurrence.

If you already live near yin energy dominated places and absolutely cannot move out, the feng shui remedy is to introduce features which creates yang energies that effectively balance out the yin energies. If you live too near a cemetery, paint the side of the wall that faces the cemetery a bright red! This will absorb the yin energy emanating from the cemetery.

 

 

If you live next to a hospital, a nursing home, a police station or even a prison, a very effective way to counter the yin energy is to erect two tall and bright spotlights between your house and the building. If you live in an apartment next to a hospital place a bright light in any of the windows that open to a view of the hospital or other such structure.

 

 

If you live in a home that is built on land which was previously a cemetery, or had a hospital or any other yin dominated structure on it, paint your walls a bright color, keep the radio on for the best part of the day, and create activity within your home. If your home is left empty for most part of the day when you are at work and the kids are at school, keep the radio or TV turned on, OR keep a pet – a dog or a cat – this is the best way of activating valuable yang energy.

Even if your home does not suffer from the affliction dealt with here, implementing all of the suggestions above will be auspicious as it represents good feng shui to generate yang energies.