Feng Shui Overview (ritual, Earth, tradition, missionaries, evolution)

[Jaymes]

Feng Shui

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Feng Shui or fengshui is the ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment that has its origins from Taoism. The practice is estimated to be more than three thousand years old.

"Feng Shui" literally means "wind and water" in Chinese.

Overview

Traditional ("classical," "authentic") feng shui is a Chinese ethnoscience that addresses the design and layout of cities, villages, dwellings, and buildings. The construction of graves and tombs also includes feng shui, but the rules for dwellings differ from those applied to "yin houses" (houses of the dead). Feng shui 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 disperses with the Wind and collects on the boundaries of Water". Hence the name.

Traditional feng shui 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 archaeological discoveries and the work of archeoastronomers.

Traditional Feng Shui schools can be segregated in to 2 broad groups: San He (Three Harmonies) and San Yuan (Three Cycles). The former emphasizes on the effect of surrounding landforms while the latter gives more weight to the factor of time.

The New Age versions — Black Hat Sect, Pyramid Feng Shui, Fuzion, Intuitive, etc. — do not share this history. These offshoots typically use "intuitive" methods with concepts from the 19th-century Spiritualist movement, and self-help techniques and affirmations, along with modern interior design. For example, the Black Hat 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. 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. It is believed by many that individuals using New Age methods seek to profit from naïve consumers by explaining New Age versions as "classical" or traditional" feng shui. Yet, according to recent fieldwork in rural China by Ole Bruun, qi flow is rarely a concern in traditional feng shui.

Archaeology

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 BCE. 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 BCE) 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 BCE to c. 3900 BCE. 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.

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 feng shui 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 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 People's Republic of China (PRC). However, the rapid modernization of China has led to feng shui 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.