What is real Feng Shui? How is it difficult from what you may have seen in books and magazines? Real Feng Shui is a system of choosing and organizing living space to maximize health, abundance and family happiness. I speak of living space here, but knowledgeable readers will know that originally much of Feng Shui was involved with siting graves. Feng Shui originates in China, a country that was steeped in respect for ancestors. It was believed that the grave of a forebear would influence all descendants for 7 generations. Thus a person’s luck might be favorably or unfavorable influenced by the grave of his forebears! This area of Feng Shui, called yin Feng Shui, is not an area of my study, and not much used in the West. I wonder, but do not know, what effect occurs if an ancestor’s remains are lost, or cremated, or scattered. But let’s look at the Feng Shui of the living, yang Feng Shui!

Yang Feng Shui, hereafter just called Feng Shui, has many threads. It began in China and uses many methodologies. It classifies places and directions as yin or yang, and also according to the five-element theory—the five Chinese elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Feng Shui is very interested in siting of a building, the slope of the surrounding land, and the nearby buildings and topography. All of these are contained in the most popular school of Feng Shui found in the US, the Black Hat Sect. Most books and magazine articles, even most practitioners, are using Black Hat techniques. Having been there and done that, I can authoritatively say that Black Hat is only part of the true Feng Shui, and most of the time its incompleteness will mean that it is ineffective. Sorry.

So what is the real Feng Shui? It uses the knowledge of forms and yin-yang and the five elements and incorporates the time cycles of a building and its compass direction. It turns out that there are major changes every 20 years, and minor yearly changes, that have strong compelling effects on a building and its occupants. Equally important is the compass heading of the building. There are 24 compass headings in the Chinese system and these lead to separate effects on the building and its occupants. Thus all 24 compass headings change every 20-year cycle and each has minor one-year effects lasting from one Chinese New Year to the next. Our current cycle began with the Chinese New Year in early 1984. The next cycle will begin early in 2004.

A classically trained Feng Shui practitioner will want to actually visit your home or business. S/He will want the floor plan, perhaps the site plan, the date of construction and occupancy, and the birth dates and genders of all the occupants. The practitioner’s job is to maximize the harmony of the building (according to your stipulations) and to match each person to a harmonious room. Some buildings have pretty bad Feng Shui and are very expensive to remedy. Others are so blessed that it is almost impossible to do anything wrong! If you’ve lived or worked in a building for more than a month, you will know which kind of building you have—good, bad or indifferent. The Feng Shui practitioner can advise you as to what can be remedied, but you have to make the decision about whether to go to the expense of making necessary changes, or to just look for a “better” place.

Although many of the first people to hang out a Feng Shui shingle were decorators, Feng Shui is not interior decorating! A home may be very tastefully decorated and also very bad Feng Shui. Conversely, its taste may be dreadful, but the Feng Shui excellent! In classical Feng Shui, suggestions may be made about adding metal or water (or fire, or earth, or wood) to a given room, and that may include changing colors, but this is not decorating. See your Feng Shui practitioner first, and then tell your decorator which colors to use.

Why is Feng Shui, as portrayed in the popular press, so confusing? Feng Shui derives from a long history in which it was taught in very small groups, usually just to a couple of chosen apprentices, often male relatives. Several students who studied with the same teacher may have been imparted different knowledge, equally valid, but incomplete unless combined with what the others had learned. This was a technique to maintain the secret nature of the teachings and often resulted in knowledge being fragmented. Today, we are piecing together this knowledge, but with additional handicaps, at least for Westerners, of working outside the culture and outside the language of the originators of Feng Shui. As a westerner, it requires study and discernment to find the real Feng Shui.

Copyright 2000, all rights reserved, Lalia Robinson Wilson

Author's Bio: 

Lalia is a long time student and practitioner of Feng Shui. She is available for consultations in East Tennessee and urges you to contact a local practitioner of Classical Feng Shui in your area. To find out more about Lalia and her work, visit www.joy-and-harmony.bigstep.com.