A History Of Feng Shui

       Feng Shui is the term now used for a technical earth science, a natural science that was part of a wider scientific and philosophical system developed in Neolithic (and possibly Paleolithic) Asia and brought to the height of refinement by Daoists.

      The original science was Kan Yu, literally rendered by many as "time theory and geographical theory," or "looking into the heavens/looking at the earth." Yuan Kong, another name for the science, literally translates as "space-time." It is the theory of time and geography in Chinese culture that forms the basis of what most people call Feng Shui (fung shoy, fung shui, fung schway), which became the layman's term for Kan Yu because of a misinterpretation.

       The specific methodology for detecting patterns of terrestrial energy using movements of wind and water is mentioned in a Daoist encyclopedia, Huai-nan Zi (c. 100 BCE), a collaboration between King Lui-an of Huai-nan and various Daoist scholars invited to his court. The term "Feng Shui" possibly developed from a discussion by Kuo Pu (267 - 324) of the Huai-nan Zi in his commentary to an old dictionary, the Er-ya and a book about geography (Shan hai Jing). The uneducated trivialized the science as an observation of wind and water. When white missionaries entered China and learned of the practice, they associated it with geomancy, a Latin term literally meaning "earth prophecy," which is a method of divination using handfuls of dirt scattered on the ground or markings made on the earth. Kan Yu is part of a broad field of study known in Han times as Yuan xue, which combined Kan Yu with Yi Jing, Zi-wei, and other disciplines. This combined field of study is what is generally referred to today as "traditional" or "classical" Feng Shui.

      Westerners and even some Chinese misinterpret the term on a regular basis. For many Classical scholars, "Feng Shui" is a term used by those of low culture. Those of a higher calling tend to call themselves "practitioners of principles of the land," that is Di Li Shi or Kan Yu Shi.

       The Book of the Devil Valley Master (c. 400 BCE) and the Book of Master Han Fei (c. 300 BCE) mention the antiquity of the "south-pointer" or Si Nan (the lodestone compass) for establishing direction, and it is known that the Si Nan was originally used to site buildings and settlements. Huangdi's reign (2697 - 2597 BCE) supposedly saw the invention of the compass; but historians believe it was during Zheng Wang's reign (1115 - 1078 BCE) that the Si Nan came into use. Archeology and site cosmology make it plain that a compass was most certainly used before Zheng Wang's time to site temples and other structures. Longshan culture (2500 - 1900 BCE) suggests early use of Kan Yu in its elaborate ceremonial and funerary precincts. Mohenjo-daro and certain Neolithic Chinese settlements laid out in the "magic square" grid pattern characteristic of Preheaven and Postheaven Baguas argue for advancing the age of the science beyond current boundaries. (Interestingly, Huangdi's reign is roughly concurrent with Wayland's Smithy Phase II in England, while Zheng Wang's reign is later than Stonehenge.)

      Professor Stephen Field, Dept. of Languages and Literature at Trinity University, has presented research suggesting that there was a system of Feng Shui employed before development of the Five Elements (c. 4th century BCE) and practices that are known from the time of the Tang Dynasty. Based on his analysis, an earlier system of divination using the houtian arrangement of the trigrams common to Kan Yu was available to practitioners before the Han Dynasty. However, most Western historians, examining the form of Feng Shui accessible today, tend to date it during the Warring States Period (480 BCE - 221 BCE) when it was the province of esoteric scholars, forecasters, and mystics known as Fang Shi.

       Fang in ancient Chinese dictionaries generally meant "efficacious," "formulaic," "correlative," "comparative," "medicinal," "spiritual," "esoteric." It also referred to people, places, and cultures far away from the emperor's court -- to outlying provinces where most esoteric masters (Fang Shi) were born and lived. Shi generally referred to a scholar-bureaucrat. For instance, the "I-Shi" was the Chinese equivalent of the U.S. Surgeon General, but the term also referred to a Fang Shi medical practice in the Yellow Emperor tradition. In Shang times, the esoteric masters read the oracles and possessed other arcane skills; in later times they would become part of the scholarly, bureaucratic gentry, but because of their Daoist practices philosophically opposed to the entrenched Ju-ist (Confucian) majority.

Fang Shi originally comprised three different disciplines:

• Divination and the invocation of spirits (but not always in terms of the shamanic)
  
  
• Pharmaceutical and hygienic medicine
  
  
• Astrology and calendrics

      Over millennia, the pharmaceutical/medical form evolved with other scientific disciplines into what we now know as Chinese medicine. Although medicine was a respectable study of Confucian physicians, due to its associations with pharmacy it was connected to Fang Shi medical practitioners and Daoist alchemists and herbalists.

      The divination and astrological/calendrical forms were merged into one form with many subdisciplines, but many are recognizable today as part of the science of traditional Feng Shui.

      In ancient China, Fang Shi practitioners preferred to specialize in one of the three forms. The medical practitioners received less attention from the historians than the divination experts because the latter's skills and education were closer to their own.

The Scientific Background of Feng Shui

      Premodern China gave the world several of the mathematical and scientific concepts we take for granted today, and mathematics and experiment have always been the backbone of Kan Yu.

      The magnetic compass was invented in China for use by Kan Yu practitioners. It was adapted from the "south pointing spoon," the Si Nan. Joseph Needham, author of Science and Civilization in China, observes that the Luo Pan is "the most ancient of all pointer-readings, and . . . the first step on the road to all dials and self-registering meters." The Luo Pan is a complex instrument, developed over centuries to enable practitioners to make precise calculations of time and space in their subtle science.

      Because of variations over time in the earth's magnetic fields (knowledge that is also employed by archaeologists using palaeomagnetism), three systems of compass use were superimposed one upon another over the span of half a millennium and established the compass that Feng Shui practitioners use today.

      The original magnetic needle compass used for navigation was constructed in the seventh or eighth century with the needle floating in water. The true terrestrial north-south meridian was first set down by Chhiu Yun Han (c. 713 - 741) and known as the Cheng Chen. This was used until roughly 880, when readings were so far off the mark that immediate correction was required. In the eight or ninth century it was further refined with the discovery of magnetic declination. Yang Yun Sang added specialized compass points to compensate for the variation. The Feng Chen or "seam needle" fixed the Cheng Chen's variations. The compass was again adjusted in the 1100s when Lai Wen-Chun came up with the Chung Chen (the central needle). Chinese used compasses for centuries prior to even the most rudimentary use on European ships. As late as the seventeeth century, all Western compasses still pointed south just like the ancient south-pointing spoons they were built to imitate.

      During the Cultural Revolution, the old ways came under scrutiny once more. While its sister-science, traditional medicine received official sanction from the government, Feng Shui did not. It's not clear whether Chairman Mao's knowledge of Feng Shui played any part in its fall from favor (he came from a long line of practitioners, it is said), but it was not selected for further study and subsequently outlawed. Today, what little Feng Shui survives in China is under strict control of the Communist government.

Training

      Studies found in the histories include Charts and Tallies (Du-Zhan), which includes Lo RIver Script (Luo shu) and the Yellow River Chart (Ho tu); Calendrical Computation (Li-shu), Celestial Offices and Celestial Rulers (T'ien-kuan and Ch'i-cheng), Computational Arts (Suan-shu), Evading Stems (Tun-chia), Graph Dividing (Che-tzu), Heavenly Patterns (T'ien-wen), Medicine (I-chih), Meteorognostics (Chan-hou), Orphans and Voids (Ku-hus), Primal Pneuma (Yuan-ch'i), Prognostication (Chan), Six Day Seven Division (Liu-jen ch'i-fen), Spirit Way (Shen-Tao), Wind Angles (Feng-chiao), and Yin and Yang (Yin-yang). Many of these are part of Yuan Xue and Kan Yu as practiced today, as the study has changed little from the schooling of the ancients'.

      In traditional Feng Shui theory, life is thought to work in a specific order of descending influence:

• Destiny (karma) -- what we call personality traits or the "self-fulfilling prophecy"

• Fate, luck, fortune -- what you make of your life ("luck" being merely what you recognize as an opportunity)

• Feng Shui

• Charity, good causes (pro bono work)

• Devoted study, hard work, knowledge

      Feng Shui, third on the list, is not expected to override a person's inherent personality or what they choose to make of themselves. Personal responsibility is paramount -- no one can blame everything on "bad Feng Shui," and sloppy or otherwise inaccurate Feng Shui readings portend trouble for the reader, who is held personally responsible for their prognostications and whatever happens to the occupants of the buildings they analyze.

Gimme that old-time bigotry

Consider Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology will be perceived as 'magic' by a less-advanced civilization."

"Magic" means "superstition" to some people -- which means being one step away from unbridled barbarism. Historians who render Fang Shi as "diviner" or "magician" express much the same opinions as the imperial Chinese historians even though the two had essentially the same skills but different philosophies. It doesn't entirely explain how "geomancy" (in its technical meaning a form of spontaneous divination like dowsing) came to be used by Victorians to explain Feng Shui. The truth is that there simply was no direct Western equivalent, especially with Feng Shui's use of mathematics, so "geomancy" was substituted.

Geomancy literally means "earth prophecy" and refers to "an art of divination by means of signs derived from the earth, as by the figure assumed by a handful of earth thrown down upon some surface." This is not the methodology or the science of Kan Yu, but Westerners filtered what little they understood of Chinese scientific theory through their chauvinistic culture -- turning an ancient earth science into fortunetelling from clods of dirt.

So many Victorian scientists and scientific amateurs wrote about Roman augurs, Druidic priests, and Fang Shi as dark, irrational, prurient and decidedly "primitive." It made a lovely contrast to that pinnacle of human civilization -- the rational, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant modern man of the British Empire. Calling Feng Shui geomancy has often perpetuated this warped vision of other cultures and their formidable scientific achievements. With the demise of Cartesian thought and the advent of modern science the ethnocentric mindset of Victorians has become increasingly obvious.

Weighty matters

• Maintaining the emperor's youth and vitality (macrobiotics)

• Maintaining correct measurement standards for time, weight, and pitch

• Performing divination and guiding governmental policies toward spiritual principles

The medical practitioners of ancient China were rightly famous for their efforts, which include the earliest known treatments for thyroid disorders and diabetes. But the practitioners of what came to be known as Feng Shui only now are receiving their due, thanks to the efforts of a variety of scholars.

Ancient China based all its measurements on the musical pitches of its bells. One of the duties of the imperial or courtly Fang Shi was to ascertain the standardization of measurements, including the pitches of the empire's bells. One Feng Shui man mentioned in the biographies became famous solely because of his bells.

As stated in Kyo Yu, written several hundred years before the common era, kings regulated the tuning of bells to ensure the security of the state. The preservation of peace and the integrity of the state corresponded with the concept of standardized measurements. Without consistent measurements there would be widespread corruption, leading to social unrest and civil war.

Huang-chung and ta-lu pitch pipes were invented as a cheaper solution for achieving standardization. The bamboo pipes were far less expensive than cast bells, yet still capable of sustaining the requisite note. As one ancient imperial document explains:

The basis of the linear measure is the length of . . . the pitch pipe. Using grains of medium-sized black millet the length of Huang-chung is 90 fen, one fen being equal to the width of a grain of millet . . . Using grains of medium-sized millet, 1200 grains fill its tube . . . The contents of one . . . tube, i.e., 1200 grains of millet, weigh 12 chu [half an ounce].

All this may seem like so much dry measure to us, but it had broad implications for society. People received monthly rations of rice which had to be carefully measured lest corruption and riots follow. (Rations are still part of modern life in some areas of the world -- for instance, Iraqi citizens receive 15.4 pounds of wheat flour and 3.3 pounds of rice each month.) The standard was important enough to be accorded religious value. Worship of the rice-measure involved the compass points, candles, and incense; it could also include items like a foot measure, scales, a mirror, and scissors. This rice-measure corresponds to a unit of measure used in the West for a monthly wheat ration.

Metrologists refer to a unit of measure -- the artaba, a Persian term -- used extensively throughout the ancient world. This unit is found in Old Persian texts along with Syriac, Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, and Greek documents. Ancient Egyptians spoke of the qedet, their version of an artaba.

The most common unit of volume measure in ancient times was 1/60 of an artaba. In medieval Europe the monetary standard was 1/1000 of an artaba, which was used to determine the weight of coins. One unit based upon the artaba, the "Cologne ounce," was named after the city housing the mint employed by Carolingian emperors. In medieval England, the primary monetary measurement based on 1/1000 of an artaba was the "Tower ounce," named after the mint in the Tower of London.

Though this ancient measure is no longer in use, many of our modern measurements were derived from the artaba. Professor Livio Catullo Stecchini, a primary researcher in ancient metrology, is certain that the artaba points to a universal metrological standard in the ancient world. Still others have concluded that traditional Feng Shui is the tantalyzing historical record of a lost planetary science. Either way, it is obvious that Feng Shui offers a long and illustrious history that is slowly unfolding for Western society in new and exciting ways.

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