The Truth about Chinese Fengshui

This will not be a standard exposé. I do not seek to discredit a movement or any particular proponent of a movement. Instead, as a scholar of ancient China who has studied the origin and development of Chinese fengshui, I feel it is my duty to educate rather than excoriate. There is so much misinformation being supplied to the public by uninformed individuals that someone needs to step forward and set the record straight. I will try in this essay to correct the errors and clarify the misunderstanding.

So what exactly is fengshui? Is it an art or a science? Is it a religion or a philosophy? In order to answer these questions, we will need to look more closely at the practice of fengshui. Complicating our task is the fact that there is more than one kind of fengshui, and more than one purpose for conducting fengshui readings. For our purposes, I will accept the common generalization that there are two major schools of fengshui--the Form School, where the physical aspects of the landscape are the focus, and the Compass School, where the astrological or cosmological orientation of the site is the focus of examination. The earliest texts on the subject of fengshui deal almost exclusively with the geophysical environment, and that is how I shall begin the analysis.

Let me begin the discussion of the external environment of fengshui by invoking the image of the dragon. From a Western perspective we can say that the dragon is a metaphor that represents the lay of the land. We name our landforms in a similar fashion. So, near the town of Wimberly, Texas, is a feature called the Devil's Backbone. However, for the Chinese, describing a topographical feature as a dragon is not simply descriptive of its profile against the horizon. The physical environment is perceived to be a living entity, and the external resemblance is a manifestation of the internal life. Therefore, in traditional China the physical environment is perceived to be a real dragon, and the ultimate purpose of fengshui is to locate the cave or lair of the dragon.

The earliest Chinese text to discuss the physical environment of fengshui is the Book of Burial, written in the 4^th century AD. It discusses the placement of tombs rather than residences, but the procedures for locating both were basically the same. Let's see how the Book of Burial describes the dragon:

Arteries spring from low land terrain; bones spring from mountain terrain. They wind sinuously from east to west and from south to north. Thousands of feet high is called forces; hundreds of feet high is called features. Forces advance and finish in features. … Where forces cease and features soar high, with a stream in front and a hill behind, here hides the head of the dragon. … Where terrain winds about and collects at the center, this is called the belly of the dragon.

This is the geophysical character of the dragon, but there is also a very important meteorological element in the physical description of the site. The following passage from the Book of Burial is the first time in recorded history that the term fengshui is used:

Qi rides the wind (feng) and scatters, but is retained when encountering water (shui). The ancients collected it to prevent its dissipation, and guided it to assure its retention. Thus it was called fengshui. According to the laws of fengshui, the site that attracts water is optimal, followed by the site that catches wind.

As we can see here, fengshui does not mean "the way of wind and water." Instead, wind and water are means by which qi is controlled. Wind scatters qi, so we should block its ingress. Water collects qi, so we should encourage its presence. This will ensure that sufficient qi surrounds the tomb or house. A proper translation of fengshui therefore is "(hinder the) wind (and hoard the) water."

So what is qi?  One of the earliest descriptions of qi, appearing in a 4^th century BC text, reads as follows:

           Water is the root of all things and the source of all life…. Water is the blood and breath [qi] of the earth, functioning in similar fashion to the circulation of blood and breath in the sinews and veins. Guanzi, ch. 39.

Here, qi is breath, and water is the blood and breath of the earth. The Book of Burial elaborates:  “Where the ground holds auspicious qi, the earth conforms and rises. When ridges hold accumulated qi, water conforms and accompanies them.” Ridges in this passage is a physiological term referring to the arterial branches or vessels of the dragon veins. Where water flows on the surface, qi flows beneath the surface.  When the flow of qi is discovered, then we must look for the location where that flow slows down and pools or accumulates. The Book of Burial clarifies in this fashion:          

Where the earth takes shape, qi flows accordingly; thereby things are born. For qi courses within the ground, its flow follows the contour of the ground, and its accumulation results from the halt of terrain.  

This pooling or concentration of qi is an ancient concept that also began as an explanation of human physiology. The following passage is from a 4^th century BC Daoist book of philosophy called the Zhuangzi (ch. 22): “Man's life is the assembling of qi. The assembling is deemed birth; the dispersal is deemed death.” Which of course is why a pool of qi is advantageous for the lair. According to the Book of Burial: “Life is accumulated qi. It solidifies into bone, which alone remains after death. Burial returns qi to the bones, which is how the living are endowed.” Somehow the pooling of qi around the interred bones affects the lives of the descendants of the deceased. This final passage reveals the metaphysical aspect of qi--its ability to enhance the lives of people in its proximity.

The process whereby the bones are energized is called "mutual resonance." According to a 2^nd century BC text:

All things are the same as their qi; all things respond to their own class. … Things within the same class mutually move each other; root and twig mutually respond to each other. Huainanzi, chs. 3, 4

The standard proof of mutual resonance given by the ancient philosophers is this: if a string on one lute is plucked, the same string on a nearby lute will simultaneously vibrate. It follows, then, that the qi of the interred corpse and the qi of the living descendants are identical. Therefore, when the vital, life-giving qi of the burial site surrounds the bones, they are energized like a dead battery being recharged, and the lives of the descendants are thereby endowed. We might be tempted to speculate that it is the spirit of the deceased that consciously bestows rewards or punishments, based on the ability of the living to properly orient the tombs of the dead. But this is not the case. Ancestor worship is directed mainly toward the patriarch, while fengshui is not so sexist! Even if grandma’s spirit was not worshiped, it was still important to properly orient her tomb.

When we realize that the unplucked lute string vibrates because it is tuned to the sound waves produced by the plucked string, we may speculate that fengshui is a science, and qi some type of energy wave. Another analogy may prove helpful here. The Chinese believe that qi flows through meridians within the human body just like it flows within ridges and branches in the earth. The acupuncture point on the human body is also called a cave or lair, so we can say that the mountain lair is simply the acupuncture point on the earth. When the grave is excavated or the foundation of the house is dug, the geophysical meridians are tapped just like those reached by the acupuncture needle in the human body. Acupuncture has been proven to work, although scientists have not been able to discover how. In other words, science has yet to prove the existence of a qi force flowing in the human body.

What about a qi force flowing in the body of earth? Certainly there are forces at work within the earth that cannot be seen or consciously felt by humans--especially magnetic fields. Certain creatures do have an affinity for magnetic waves--dolphins, whales, sea turtles, and homing pigeons all have magnetite in their brains that gives them a magnetic sense of direction. It is possible that humans are influenced on some level by magnetism. Is it possible that an electromagnetic radiation of some kind is the focus of fengshui? The compass was invented by the Chinese specifically to assist in the reading of terrestrial fengshui. So it appears that the Chinese knew early on that the unseen force called qi was electromagnetic in character. Unfortunately, modern science has been unable to determine the influence of such waves on the well being of humans. If qi could be proven to exist, or if magnetic fields could be proven to influence human life, then fengshui might be considered an environmental science.

The subject of direction is a convenient segue to the discussion of Compass School fengshui. As we have seen in the Book of Burial, mountainous landscape is the optimum environment in which to trace the flow of qi. But not all landscape is mountainous, so there had to be a way to detect qi when the topographical forms and features did not protrude sufficiently to locate the hidden dragon veins. The Chinese believed that the realms of heaven, earth, and man were infinitely correlated. So the qi of any given locale or any given person on earth was capable of being read in the stars.

 In ancient China there was no distinction between astronomy and astrology, because the stars in the night sky were celestial deities. Those with an understanding of the movement of stars therefore gained an understanding of the will of heavenly spirits. This was crucial information for the emperor, who was the center of the human realm as was Shang Di, or God on High, the center of the heavenly realm. Shang Di's celestial throne was the Big Dipper, around which all other stars revolved. The handle of the Dipper was the sword of God, which was capable of dealing death and destruction in the direction to which it pointed. The Chinese accordingly created an instrument that was capable of determining the configuration of the Big Dipper in the sky at any time of day or night. This was the shipan, or cosmograph, pictured here: