© 1997 -
by Master Thomas Coxon
Authentic Feng Shui
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Feng Shui - Professional
Getting straight down to the “nitty gritty”. What can a professional practitioner do for you that you can’t do for yourself by following the advice in our “DIY” feng shui section and supplementing that by reading a few feng shui books or taking a short feng shui course such as the one in this site?
It all boils down to two things really; Knowledge and Experience.
Experience
Lets take experience first. There’s a world of difference between using a methodology that you’ve used a thousand times before (literally in our case) and doing something for the first or second time. To take a simple example, if you were assessing the form outside your home, would you associate the sha line running across the front garden with your car breaking down more often than it should? Probably not, since it’s not mentioned anywhere in the literature. Yet we’ve seen exactly that happen on several occasions.
Knowledge
In the pages about Feng Shui in our DIY section we have attempted to clarify some of the analysis tools and formulas which you will encounter in books and magazines.
Authentic Feng Shui applied at the level of a professional consultation is an altogether more complex, broader and in depth affair, often leading to recommendations which may differ from those which are obtained from more superficial analyses using tools such as the PaKua. It’s not that those simple methods are wrong, it’s just that some methods are stronger than others and if you have to choose between them, the stronger method will produce better results (we’re back to experience again).
In this page we want to give you an appreciation of these more in-
Our Master (Master Chan Kun Wah) identifies three principles of good Feng Shui.
- Use the good mountain (or building) to your advantage (which controls a persons life & health)
- Use the good river (or road) to your advantage (which influences a persons money)
- Reduce the effect of negative influences (often called Sha in the West)
Learning to recognize these as they occur in the modern environment is part of the skill of becoming a practitioner.
There are two principle subsets of Feng Shui:-
- Yin Feng Shui which deals with the effects of our environment on our buildings and
on our ancestors graves,
(the importance of which should not be underestimated). - Yang Feng Shui which relates to our bodies and to our buildings.
As a generalization the sum total of the influences outside the building are about twice as powerful as the total of those inside. (To put formulas such as the Pakua into context, they describe only a small fraction of the influences at work on the inside of a building).
Within both Yin and Yang Feng Shui there are many aspects, which we in the West like to call “Schools”, compartmentalize, and then ask “which one is best?”.
In reality they are all part of the same whole, with each one yielding important information about different aspects of the energy and its effect upon us. Some are stronger, some are weaker, but all are useful to a greater or lesser degree. The more of these a practitioner is able to examine, the better the results are likely to be from following their advice.
The principle split which is often made in the West is between Form School and Compass School.
Form School
Form School deals with the physical shapes in our environment and the interplay between them, our buildings and ourselves. It is a very complex aspect of Feng Shui with well defined interactions with the compass formulas and horoscopes. It is also extremely important, because it tells us about the influences of the energy surrounding our buildings, both in the air and under the ground.
The energy in the air is drawn into the building through its doors, windows and other openings. This interacts with the energy which rises up through the ground into the building. These interactions are heavily influenced by the external factors and are further influenced by the shape of building itself as well as the shapes of the spaces and objects within the building. In turn this energy interacts with our energy (our Aura's) and thus it influences us.
Compass School
Compass School deals with the effects of the less tangible, but no less powerful influences, associated with the magnetic field of our planet and its surroundings. There are many formulas within Compass School, each documenting different aspects of the energy. For each formula the 360 degrees of the compass are divided up into a number of sections of equal width. Differing readings within the same sector all have the same influence, insofar as the influences described by that formula are concerned.
As a general principle; the smaller the section on the compass (known as a LuoPan); the more powerful are the influences which are described by the associated calculations. For instance the Fin Kam (which each occupy a 120th part of the compass) are more powerful than the Dragons (which each occupy a 72nd part of the compass). The Kinship lines which each occupy a 384th part of the compass are more powerful still. The Pakua, who's divisions each occupy an 8th part of the compass is the weakest of all – which is not saying that it is useless, but there are more powerful influences at work as well.
That's how the West likes to classify things, but there are deeper classifications as well.
Within the professional Feng Shui community the various methods and formulas are
grouped according to their underlying principles (each with their own Yin and Yang
aspects and each with their own Form and Compass methods), which gives rise to several
distinct styles :-
- Gee Bah (Nine Count) is the simplest style. It is what you read about in most of
the books in the West that are based on Chinese Feng Shui (also sometimes referred
to by its Japanese name of "9 Star Ki"). It uses the PaKua and has 8 principle influences
(knowledge, family, wealth etc.). Unfortunately nowhere is it written down in English
literature that this PaKua only applies to indoors, and many Western authors, practitioners
and teachers erroneously give instruction of how to use it outdoors, to lay out gardens
for instance.
- San Yuen (Three Periods) style is becoming more widely known in the West, with all
the books which are being written about “Flying Stars” -
actually the San Yuen (or 20 years) flying star calculation. Like Ba Chap, to get the most benefit from it, the San Yuen charts need to be read in conjunction with the surrounding forms, both within the building and outside. - Bah Chap (Eight Mansions) style is the next higher level. Most of it is only documented
in Chinese. It has 6,000 principle influences. Although fairly simple, it can give
a lot of useful information about a building and its surroundings and how they interact
with each of the occupants. It is particularly useful in determining health issues
and assisting finances. Either this style and/or San Yuen Fei Xing (Flying Star)
are the styles commonly used by many Chinese practitioners, particularly in the west.
- Sam Hap (Three Combinations) and San He (Three Meetings) style is the style practised
by many of the worlds Feng Shui Masters. It has 250,000 principle influences. What
little has been published is again mostly in Chinese. This is the style which is
frequently used to position roads, gates, driveways, doors and water (i.e. laying
out or altering the surroundings of a building). It is much more powerful than Bah
Chap, and at least one Far Eastern feng shui Master claims to have turned several
people into millionaires, through the application of its formulas.
- Yuen Hom / Xuan Kong (Mysterious Subtleties, also known as Imperial Feng Shui) style,
is the most powerful style of all. It is practised by a handful of Masters and their
pupils, most of whom are in Tai Wan. It has about 20,000,000,000 principle influences.
It is said that you can achieve anything with Yuen Hom (Xuan Kong). It is so powerful
and fast acting that, as its name implies, its use was once reserved exclusively
for the emperors of China. It is now used mainly on behalf of large corporations
and governments in the Far East. As with Sam Hap very little has ever been mentioned
in the West, and only a little of it has ever been published -
even in Chinese. It can only be learned from a Master who practises it (such as Master Chan Kun Wah).
As I hope you will have gathered by now, the more advanced styles are not only more powerful, but they also allow us to assess very specifically the effects which a particular change will have.
Time
We haven't mentioned time – yet.
Think of time as a fourth dimension – literally.
As a generalisation, where you can plug a division of the compass into a formula,
you can also plug in the corresponding division of time, and base calculations on
that either instead of or as well as the compass direction (i.e. the interactions
of time and direction can examined by plugging both simultaneously into the same
formula -
When something is initiated it locks into the influences which were around in all four dimensions (both space and time). This applies to all events, but some are more significant than others; the point of conception is important, but the point of birth is more so; the point where/when a building is altered is also important, but the point of it's “birth” (actually when it's roof goes on & it starts to contain the energy for the first time) is more so. In business the time when a contract is signed is important, but the time when the company was created is even more so.
The branch of Feng Shui which deals with this aspect of things is horoscopes. All of the above styles have their horoscope parts, but the best known are Ba Zi and Tzu Wei, which deal primarily with the effects of the Sun and the Moon respectively. Neither one of them is more important than the other, but Ba Zi is probably the more commonly used one. In just the same way that you can plug time into a compass formula to see how the influences on say a building are modified by time, so you can plug compass directions and shapes into a horoscope to see what the effects will be on a person or a business.
So all in all professional feng shui, with a competent practitioner is an altogether more in depth and effective affair than DIY or even Flying Star feng shui.
