Feng Shui / Fengshui

Feng shui or fengshui (Simplified Chinese: 风水; Traditional Chinese: 風水) is the ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement of space to attempt to achieve harmony with the environment that has its origins from Taoism / Daoism. The practice is estimated to be more than three thousand years old.

Proper Feng Shui is a set of general guidelines for the creation of beautiful architecture and comfortable interior decoration not superstition as it has become for some.

"Feng shui" literally means "wind and water" in Chinese. The same Chinese term 風水 is also used in Japan and Korea, where it denotes the same meaning and is called fūsui in Japan and pung-su in Korea.

Contents

Overview of Feng Shui / Fungshui

Traditional ("classical") feng shui is a Chinese esoteric science that addresses the design and layout of cities, villages, dwellings, and buildings in order to harness beneficial qi / chi from one's surroundings. Feng Shui addresses the Yang aspect (living) but can also be applied to the Yin aspect — as seen in the careful construction of graves and tombs. Rules for yang dwellings differ from those applied to "yin houses" (houses of the dead).

Fengshui was labeled geomancy by 19th-century Christian missionaries to China; however, geomancy and feng shui differ widely in their scope, aims, and means. The name Feng Shui literally means "Wind and Water". The Book of Burial says "The Qi / Chi disperses with the Wind and collects on the boundaries of Water," hence the name.

Traditional fengshui uses a specialized compass called a Luopan, and a comprehensive array of calculations involving mathematical iterations. It has foundation texts, core theories and methods, and an impressive past based on archeological discoveries and the work of archeoastronomers.

Traditional feng shui schools can be segregated into two broad groups: San He (Three Harmonies) and San Yuan (Three Cycles). The former emphasizes the effect of surrounding landforms while the latter gives more weight to the factor of time.

More recent explorations — Black Sect, Pyramid Feng Shui, Fuzion, Intuitive Feng Shui ®, etc — move beyond this ancient history. These offshoots typically use methods with concepts from the 19th century Spiritualist movement, and self-help techniques and affirmations, along with modern interior design and studies of environmental psychology. For example, the Black Sect version of feng shui, which began in 1960s Hong Kong (and incorporated as a U.S. church in 1986), explains feng shui as the art of arranging objects within a home to obtain an optimum flow of qi / chi. In traditional feng shui, the objects within a structure are of lesser significance than the position of a building and its local environment — especially microclimates.  According to recent fieldwork in rural China by Ole Bruun, qi / chi flow is rarely a concern in traditional feng shui yet is the fundamental basis of the study of personal health in Chinese medicine. Intuitive Feng Shui ® is described as "the art of harmonizing the way people relate to their environments" and examines "the architecture of consciousness" in making changes in ones core beliefs and concepts while simultaneously altering the external surroundings.

Archeology and Feng Sui / Fengshui

In 1978 researchers presented evidence at a Zhouyi conference that the Hetu and Luoshu, the two most-recognizable diagrams related to feng shui, are actually 3-D star maps. The estimated date for the astronomy is at least 6000 BC. A page in "The Astronomical Phenomena" (Tien Yuan Fa Wei) compiled by Bao Yunlong in the 13th century also shows the Luoshu as a star diagram. The original trigrams of the Yijing, known popularly as the eight digrams or "Bagua," seem to be included in these maps.

Traditional Feng Shui began as an interplay of construction and astrology. An early Yangshao village at Banpo (c. 4800 BC) had its cemetery at the north and its dwellings built on a north-south axis. The dwellings were oriented to catch the mid-afternoon sun at its warmest a few days after the winter solstice. (Some tribes in southern China still refer to this month as "House-building Month.") Professor David Pankenier and his associates performed retrospective computation on the Chinese sky at the time of the Banpo dwellings to show that the asterism Yingshi (Lay out the Hall, in the Warring States period and early Han era) corresponded to the sun's location at this time. (This housing alignment persisted throughout the Neolithic through the history of China; it is used today whenever space permits.)

The asterism Yingshi originally was Xuangong (“Dark Palace”), a name that indicated winter and the northern sky. It was a star-landmark of the spring equinox and winter solstice from c. 7000 BC to c. 3900 BC. Ding (α Peg) was the leading-star. Yingshi was used to indicate the appropriate time and orientation for a capital city, according to the Shijing; by the time of the Zhou the asterism had been used to orient homes, villages, and capital cities for three thousand years. Most capital cities of China, including Beijing, follow this design. The rules for capital cities and other habitations can be found in the Zhou-era Kaogong ji (Manual of Crafts). Rules for builders were codified in the Lu ban jing (Carpenter's Manual).

A grave at Puyang (3000 BCE) that contains mosaics of the Dragon and Tiger constellations and Beidou (Big Dipper) is similarly oriented along a north-south axis, and it includes the classical "heaven-round, earth-square" design applied to other buildings in China at varying periods, and was used in the design of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

At Lamao, an excavation recently yielded an artifact (c. 3000 BC) that researchers claim to be marked with the Twelve Branches commonly used for calendars and feng shui calculations. Other markings appear to be constellations of the time.

An excavated grave at Lingjiatan contained a jade plaque (c. 3000 BC) with a compass design. (Similar markings were also found on pottery from the Taihu region.) According to researchers, the shape of the jade denotes the Earth. The center square is the sun. The larger circle is the movement of Earth through the seasons. The "arrows" point to cardinal and intercardinal directions. Historian Li Xueqin links this artifact with the liuren astrolabe, the ancestor of the shi and the Luopan.

At Taosi the traditional home of King Yao, an observatory (c. 2400 BC) with 12 sighting windows may have been used as mentioned in Yaodian (in the Shijing) and Wudibenji (in the Shiji), as Yao assigned astronomers to observe sunrise, sunset, and evening stars in culmination. According to modern astronomers, Yao's pronouncement of the four major constellations is consistent with the astronomy for the age of the observatory. By tradition Yao is linked with the practice of feng shui.

The tombs of Shang kings and their consorts at the cemetery of Xibeigang near Anyang lie on a north-south axis, ten degrees east of due north. The Xia and Shang palaces at Erlitou are also on a north-south axis, slightly west of true north. These orientations were obtained by astronomy; the magnetic compass or zhinan zhen was not invented until the later Han era.

Feng shui devices in the late Qin and early Han eras consist of two-sided boards with astronomical sightlines. Liuren astrolabes have been unearthed intact from Qin-era tombs at Wangjiatai and Zhoujiatai. These devices date between 278 BC and 209 BC. The earliest fengshui manual unearthed by archaeologists has been dated to the Qin era.

Today feng shui practitioners can select from three types of Luopan: San He (the so-called "form school", although the compass name means "Triple Combination"), San Yuan (the so-called "compass school", although the compass name actually refers to time), and the Zong He that combines the other two.

Feng Shui / Fengshui in more recent times

During the early 1800s, feng shui was introduced to the U.S. with the first Chinese immigrants. The notorious Four Corners section of New York, which was then a Chinese ghetto, featured gambling houses and other structures that incorporated feng shui, as did the Chinatowns in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 19th-century Australia, the Joss House was built using feng shui. It has also been practiced by western "hongs" or trading companies to satisfy local business communities and to encourage luck in business.

Since the mid-20th century, feng shui has been illegal in the PRC, primarily because Mao Zedong (who had studied feng shui) denounced many practitioners' propensity for fraud. Other reasons have been suggested, which is why a department of the Chinese government was assigned to oversee its use. Ole Bruun's fieldwork has shown that during the Cultural Revolution, most feng shui practitioners had their books burnt, were persecuted and jailed, and underwent extreme privations for their knowledge of ancient Chinese culture. Very few were willing — or had the means — to leave the country.

Feng shui is still used in rural China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It is not well-known among younger Chinese in the PRC. However, the rapid modernization of China has led to fengshui becoming a worthy subject for scholarly inquiry at Chinese universities. As Chinese scholars increasingly work with their counterparts in the rest of the world, a new picture is emerging of the history and application of this ancient ceremonial custom.

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