Feng shui
Feng shui, sometimes called Chinese geomancy, is a traditional form of geomancy that originated in ancient China. The term feng shui means, literally, "wind-water". From ancient times, landscapes and bodies of water were thought to direct the flow of the universal qi – "cosmic current" or energy – through places and structures. More broadly, feng shui includes astronomical, astrological, architectural, cosmological, geographical, and topographical dimensions.
Historically, and in many parts of the contemporary Chinese world, feng shui has been used to determine the orientation of buildings, dwellings, and spiritually significant structures such as tombs.
Feng shui's global uptake during the modern era has been complex. Its host of modern detractors has been very diverse, ranging from 16th-century Jesuit missionaries to the Chinese communist revolutionaries of the 20th century. Regarding its adoption within contemporary Western societies, one scholar writes that "feng shui tends to be reduced to interior design for health and wealth. It has become increasingly visible through 'feng shui consultants' and corporate architects who charge large sums of money for their analysis, advice and design." In Western philosophy of science, feng shui is generally regarded as non-scientific, while some scientific skeptics have more narrowly classified it as a pseudoscience.
History
Origins
The Yangshao and Hongshan cultures provide the earliest known evidence for the use of feng shui. Until the invention of the magnetic compass, feng shui relied on astronomy to find correlations between humans and the universe.In 4000 BC, the doors of dwellings in Banpo were aligned with the asterism Yingshi just after the winter solstice—this sited the homes for solar gain. During the Zhou era, Yingshi was known as Ding and was used, according to the Shijing, to determine the auspicious time for constructing a capital city. The late Yangshao site at Dadiwan includes a palace-like building at its center. The building faces south and borders a large plaza. It stands on a north–south axis with another building that apparently housed communal activities. Regional communities may have used the complex.
A grave at Puyang that contains mosaics—a Chinese star map of the Dragon and Tiger asterisms and Beidou —is oriented along a north–south axis. The presence of both round and square shapes in the Puyang tomb, at Hongshan ceremonial centers and at the late Longshan settlement at Lutaigang,
suggests that gaitian cosmography existed in Chinese society long before it appeared in the Zhoubi Suanjing.
Cosmography that bears a resemblance to modern feng shui devices and formulas appears on a piece of jade unearthed at Hanshan and dated around 3000 BC. Archaeologist Li Xueqin links the design to the liuren astrolabe, zhinan zhen and luopan.
Beginning with palatial structures at Erlitou, all capital cities of China followed rules of feng shui for their design and layout. During the Zhou era, the Kaogong ji codified these rules. The carpenter's manual Lu ban jing codified rules for builders. Graves and tombs also followed rules of feng shui from Puyang to Mawangdui and beyond. From the earliest records, the structures of the graves and dwellings seem to have followed the same rules.
Early instruments and techniques
Some of the foundations of feng shui go back more than 3,500 years before the invention of the magnetic compass. It originated in Chinese astronomy. Some current techniques can be traced to Neolithic China, while others were added later.The astronomical history of feng shui is evident in the development of instruments and techniques. According to the Zhouli, the original feng shui instrument may have been a gnomon. Chinese used circumpolar stars to determine the north–south axis of settlements. This technique explains why Shang palaces at Xiaotun lie 10° east of due north. In some of the cases, as Paul Wheatley observed, they bisected the angle between the directions of the rising and setting sun to find north. This technique provided the more precise alignments of the Shang walls at Yanshi and Zhengzhou. Rituals for using a feng shui instrument required a diviner to examine current sky phenomena to set the device and adjust their position in relation to the device.
The oldest examples of instruments used for feng shui are liuren astrolabes, also known as shi. These consist of a lacquered, two-sided board with astronomical sightlines. The earliest examples of liuren astrolabes have been unearthed from tombs that date between 278 BC and 209 BC. Along with divination for Da Liu Ren the boards were commonly used to chart the motion of Taiyi through the nine palaces. The markings on a liuren/shi and the first magnetic compasses are virtually identical.
The magnetic compass was used for feng shui since its invention. Traditional feng shui instrumentation consists of the luopan or the earlier south-pointing spoon —though a conventional compass could suffice if one understood the differences. Not to be confused with the South-pointing chariot which was used for navigation. A feng shui ruler may also be employed.
Later history
After the Song dynasty, divination began to decline as a political institution and instead became an increasingly private affair. Many feng shui experts and diviners sold their services to the public market, allowing feng shui to quickly grow in popularity.During the Late Qing dynasty, feng shui became immensely popular. Widespread destitution and increasing government despotism led to feng shui becoming more widely practiced in rural areas. The Qing dynasty attempted to crack down on heterodoxy following the White Lotus Rebellion and Taiping Revolt, but feng shui's decentralization made it difficult to suppress in popular and elite circles.
Under China's Century of Humiliation, feng shui began to receive implicit government encouragement as a method of colonial resistance. Through the militarization of the countryside, the local gentry used feng shui to justify and promote popular attacks against missionaries and colonial infrastructure. This allowed local elites and government officials to bypass foreign extraterritoriality and maintain local sovereignty. This, in addition to the cultural aspects of feng shui, made the practice a powerful expression of demarcation between foreign and Chinese identities.
Following the rise of Communist China, religion and traditional cosmology were suppressed more than ever, in the name of ideological purity. Decentralized heterodoxies, like feng shui, were best adapted to survive this period. As a result, feng shui became one of the only alternative forms of thought within the Chinese countryside. Feng shui experts remained highly sought after, in spite of numerous campaigns to suppress the practice.
It was only after China's reform and opening up that feng shui would see a complete resurgence. As economic liberalization promoted social competition and individualism, feng shui was able to find new footing due to its focus on individualism and amoral justification of social differences.
Foundational concepts
Definition and classification
Feng shui views good and bad fortune as tangible elements that can be managed through predictable and consistent rules. This involves the management of qi, an imagined form of cosmic "energy." In situating the local environment to maximize good qi, one can optimize their own good fortune. Feng shui holds that one's external environment can affect one's internal state. A goal of the practice is to achieve a "perfect spot", a location and an axis in time that can help one achieve a state of shū fú or harmony with the universe.Traditional feng shui is inherently a form of ancestor worship. Popular in farming communities for centuries, it was built on the idea that the ghosts of ancestors and other independent, intangible forces, both personal and impersonal, affected the material world, and that these forces needed to be placated through rites and suitable burial places. For a fee, a Feng shui practitioner would identify suitable locations for the living and the dead to achieve shū fú. The primary underlying value was material success for the living.
''Qi'' (''ch'i'')
Qi is a movable positive or negative life force which plays an essential role in feng shui. The Book of Burial says that burial takes advantage of "vital qi". The goal of feng shui is to take advantage of vital qi by appropriate siting of graves and structures.Polarity
Polarity is expressed in feng shui as yin and yang theory. That is, it is of two parts: one creating an exertion and one receiving the exertion. The development of this theory and its corollary, five phase theory, have also been linked with astronomical observations of sunspot.The Five Elements or Forces – which, according to the Chinese, are metal, earth, fire, water, and wood – are first mentioned in Chinese literature in a chapter of the classic Book of History. They play a very important part in Chinese thought: ‘elements’ meaning generally not so much the actual substances as the forces essential to human life. Earth is a buffer, or an equilibrium achieved when the polarities cancel each other. While the goal of Chinese medicine is to balance yin and yang in the body, the goal of feng shui has been described as aligning a city, site, building, or object with yin-yang force fields.
Bagua (eight trigrams)
Eight diagrams known as bagua loom large in feng shui, and both predate their mentions in the I Ching. The Lo Chart was developed first, and is sometimes associated with Later Heaven arrangement of the bagua. This and the Yellow River Chart are linked to astronomical events of the sixth millennium BC, and with the Turtle Calendar from the time of Yao. The Turtle Calendar of Yao dates to 2300 BC, plus or minus 250 years.In Yaodian, the cardinal directions are determined by the marker-stars of the mega-constellations known as the Four Celestial Animals:
- East: The Azure Dragon —Niao, α Scorpionis
- South: The Vermilion Bird —Huo, α Hydrae
- West: The White Tiger —Mǎo, η Tauri
- North: The Black Tortoise —Xū, α Aquarii, β Aquarii