Kitabı oku: «Lillian Too’s Smart Feng Shui For The Home: 188 brilliant ways to work with what you’ve got»

1 smart feng shui basics
1 – a feng shui view of the living space

As the world becomes increasingly familiarized with feng shui, this ancient Chinese practice brings ever-growing benefits to those who apply it in their homes.

Feng shui, which literally means wind and water, promises a way of arranging space so that it brings residents good fortune while simultaneously reducing misfortune. Feng shui has gained popularity because many people are discovering that it works, and that it does not have to be difficult to bring fast results. It is easy to use at different levels, and many people are now convinced that at least some working knowledge of feng shui is necessary when setting up home, buying a new home or simply assessing one’s existing living space. It is becoming so sought after that people are finding themselves wishing that they knew exactly how to get started without having to plough through reams of books and, more importantly, without getting confused by the proliferation of feng shui literature now available.

This book on easy and practical feng shui deals with feng shui that is within the control of the average person. Solutions to feng shui afflictions usually take account of practical considerations – after all, we must work with what we’ve got. So space limitations, general immovability of doors, the presence of overhead beams, of missing corners and so forth, which often represent afflictions one cannot do much about, have a lower priority here than those aspects of the practice that can be more easily applied, thereby enhancing your feng shui overall.

Start by understanding that there are four different aspects to the practice of feng shui: exterior feng shui, interior feng shui, the importance of orientations, and time dimension feng shui, which are dealt with separately in the next four Tips.

With your floor plan and the orientations of important rooms, you can improve your feng shui.

 Note some impressions – look at the size, shape, and flow of chi, or energy, within the home.

 Take the orientation of the main door and see if anything is hurting it.

 Get yourself oriented correctly. Use a compass to mark out the different sectors.

 Superimpose the directions onto a floor plan of your home, and note the compass sector of important rooms.

Feng shui at home begins with a floor plan.

2 – the first aspect: exterior feng shui

This is the feng shui of the outside environment that surrounds an office building or your home. Different factors are considered that can affect whether the site is considered auspicious.

Exterior feng shui involves assessing a landscape in order to study the effects of mountains, hills, rivers waterways, roads, shapes, and the configuration of contours.

The external view gives you a bigger picture of feng shui, but your surroundings are usually way outside the average person’s control. Even when you know how to detect good and bad landscape feng shui, you are seldom in a position to do much about it. In modern-day living, especially in towns and cities, the practice of landscape feng shui often presents insurmountable physical and budgetary constraints.

Old traditions

The Chinese believe that every site is surrounded by four protective animal spirits: the black tortoise, the phoenix, the green dragon, and the white tiger. When a site is being assessed, the four animal names may be applied to the four points of the compass – so that north is the black tortoise, south is the phoenix, east is the green dragon, and west is the white tiger. The superior dragon hill needs to be higher and more rugged than the tiger hill. The southern, phoenix aspect should be open.

The four celestial creatures of exterior feng shui are the black turtle behind a dwelling, the green dragon on the left, the white tiger to its right, and the red phoenix in front. Their symbolic presence brings good fortune.

The white tiger is the embodiment of yin energy. It complements the yang of the green dragon.

3 – the second aspect: interior feng shui

This is taking a detailed feng shui perspective of an interior setting, looking at the chi energy flow inside houses, apartments, and office buildings.

This deals with the layout of rooms, the flow of traffic, the arrangement of furniture, the selection of colors, shapes, dimensions, and decorative materials to ensure that auspicious chi gets created within homes, and inside the rooms of offices and apartments. Interior feng shui is usually well within the control of most people. From a practical perspective, this is the branch of feng shui practice that offers the most scope for individual solutions and creativity. Taking a feng shui view of the living space therefore is primarily about interior feng shui.

Rooms in the house

Interior feng shui involves looking at the position and orientation of the front door, how the chi energy flows in, and how it enters all the rooms in the house. Any obstructions, such as pillars, beams, or badly placed staircases, are neutralized with feng shui cures such as windchimes, crystals, and plants. It is learning to train your eye so that you can easily spot problems in each area or room of your home, knowing how to position your bed auspiciously, and hang mirrors to advantage.

In interior feng shui, the front door should open inwards. An auspicious painting in the hall, such as this fish, symbolizes wealth coming into the mouth of the home.

Check out the view from your front door. A curved path and healthy plants bring in good chi energy, while a straight path or telegraph poles will create negative chi for your home.

4 – the third aspect: the importance of orientations

In Chinese feng shui, all the compass orientations of a house, apartment, or office play the largest and most crucial role in correct feng shui practice.

It is vital to establish orientations correctly before powerfully potent feng shui formulas can be correctly activated to bring fast results. This requires the use of a reliable compass and some basic reference points with which to demarcate your living and work areas. This can collectively be called the space dimension of interior feng shui, and to a very large extent this too is within the control of most people. So when you want to feng shui any living space, one of the first things you absolutely must take account of is the relative orientation of rooms, of doors, and furniture placement.

Taking a feng shui view of any space should always include input on orientations.

Using a compass

As is mentioned later in the book, you need to use a good Western compass to find out the orientation of your home and all its rooms, so that you can apply some of the most potent feng shui formulas. You can find out the facing and sitting directions of your home (see here and here,) and once the directions of each room have been established, you can activate the corners to your advantage. Even when you combine different feng shui formulas in your home, the compass directions are essential for accuracy of placing enhancements or cures, or as mentioned previously, to be aware of bad flying star configurations in different areas.

Using a compass to find the orientation of your living space, doors, windows, and furniture is the first step in understanding feng shui. If you can find the center point of your home, position a compass there and get the orientations of your living space from there.

5 – the fourth aspect: time dimension feng shui

Time dimension feng shui uses the powerful flying star formula, which refers to numbers of good luck and misfortune which affect and afflict the living space.

So after you have satisfactorily arranged the living space in accordance with all the rules and guidelines to create auspicious energy, it is then necessary to investigate how the luck of any living space can change merely by the passage of time. According to an important school of feng shui practice, every hour, day, month, and year exerts its special essence of invisible, intangible forces. These can bring extreme good fortune or intense misfortune depending on how the time stars affect different corners of your living space. Once again, this aspect of feng shui is well within one’s control. There are easy formulas, which I have condensed into tables (see Chapter 8) so that you will easily see what needs to be done at the start of each month or year in order to avoid misfortunes or to activate some good fortune. This branch of feng shui can often be predictive when you understand the basic formula of calculating the time dimension stars. Once you know the areas that are affected each year, you can apply a cure, if it is necessary, in the appropriate corner so that you will not be affected by the negative energy that will emanate from this space.

This is the annual flying star chart for 2002, the year of the Horse. Note that in this year the lucky sectors which are represented by the lucky numbers 8, 6, and I are the northwest, the southeast, and the northeast of the house space or any living space. The most auspicious corner of your rooms in 2002 is therefore the northwest. In that year the unlucky sectors are the north and south, which are both afflicted. North is the place of three killings, or three types of bad luck. South is the place of the illness star and east is the place of the deadly hue, yellow. From this chart you will know instantly which corners to activate and use and which corners to avoid.

6 – introducing the luo pan, or chinese compass

The compass is essential to practice feng shui correctly as orientation is the bedrock of all feng shui analyses and recommendations – the foundation of Chinese feng shui.

Other techniques that deal with enhancing your living space may not use the compass, but it is used by all Chinese feng shui masters in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, and Malaysia, and by those who have migrated to the West and continue to practice genuine Chinese feng shui. Their advice is based on how structures, doors, house locations, contours, and so forth interact with each other in relation to their compass orientation.

The directions indicated by a reliable compass show how chi flows within any environmental space. Every compass direction has a number of attributes that can be related to the physical structures that lie in those directions. This tells us about the quality of chi energy in those areas in terms of space and time.

So if you want to practice genuinely authentic feng shui I have to advise you to get to know and understand the compass. We can start with the Luo Pan, the traditional feng shui compass.

The Luo Pan compass is similar to any Western-style compass, in that it divides directions into 360 degrees around a circle. This is further divided into 8 main directions and 24 subdirections. These sub-directions are referred to as the 24 mountains, and each mountain measures 15 degrees (360 divided by 24 = 15.) The ring that indicates these 24 mountains is very important, simply because many feng shui formulas use the 24 mountain divisions to express good- and bad-luck orientations.

The three Luo Pans

The traditional Luo Pan is a highly revered work of great craftsmanship. It is always hand made, and its many concentric rings contain the secrets and the formulas of the master who designed it. There are several different types of Luo Pan, but the three most popular and frequently used today are:

1 The Sarn Yuan Luo Pan, which is based on the Three Cycles School. This is also referred to as the Three Period Flying Star Luo Pan.

2 The Sarn Harp Luo Pan, often referred to as the Three Harmony compass. This refers to the harmony between Heaven, Earth, and Man and is reflected in the Man Plate, the Earth Plate, and the Heaven Plate featured on this Luo Pan. These different plates are believed to reflect the three parallel levels of energy flow within the environment, and each takes the north as being 7.5 degrees different from the other. Thus the Earth Plate refers to the magnetic north but the Man and Heaven plates are 7.5 degrees to the left and right of the Earth Plate. So the north referred to in these other plates is not magnetic north.

3 The Sarn He’ Luo Pan, which is called the Three Auspicious Happenings School. This looks at the landforms, mountains, structures, and water that surround any building, and analyzes their good and bad influences based on period numbers, elements, and trigrams.

From the above small description, you can see that the Luo Pan contains a great deal of information. I have repeatedly advised novice practitioners of feng shui that the Luo Pan is not required for those who want to practice feng shui on an amateur basis. It is, however, a good idea to know what this tool is, to use an ordinary compass to take directions, and then refer to a good book to decode the formulas and methods hidden within the Luo Pan.

Please note that the Luo Pan is first and foremost a compass for measuring directions, so its most important part is the magnetic needle, the directional marking in the center. Those who aspire to use a genuine Luo Pan should never compromise on the quality of this central needle. Many of the nuances of good and bad luck depend on accurate compass readings. Always buy a Luo Pan from a feng shui master, who will reveal its code of meanings to you.

7 – the western compass in feng shui

Never estimate directions based on where you think the sun rises or sets! This kind of feng shui practice is rarely accurate, and reflects a careless approach, which seldom yields good results.

Consider the compass as an integral part of feng shui. It is, therefore, worthwhile to invest in a good, reliable personal compass. My advice is that you should look for one that has the degrees clearly marked around the outside edge. Compasses that are made with an accompanying ruler are quite useful when you are taking a door direction, because it always ensures that you have placed the compass square to the door.

It is also a good idea to look for a Western-style compass that shows the sub-divisions, or 24 mountains of the main directions. This will then make it extremely easy for you to add extra mileage to your little tool. This is because the 24 subdivisions of compass directions feature in almost all of the popular feng shui formulas, which have survived intact into the 21st century. Knowing how to get your bearings and the orientations of any home correctly and accurately is the vital first step to practicing feng shui.

Types of directions

There are two major types of directions you need to take.

1 You need to know the orientation of your home. Generally, this refers to the direction that your main door faces, but sometimes the main door’s facing direction is not the same as the general orientation of the house. In such situations, use your compass and take both these directions, then refer here and here for further analysis. Also, those of you who live in apartments should take the direction of both the entrance into the apartment building and entrance door into your apartment.

2 You need to get the orientation of the inside of your home. So read the compass from the center of the house (see here)

Hold a compass flat or place on a flat surface for accurate readings.

Compass checklist

 Always take directions holding the compass perfectly flat on your palm, as this will ensure a more accurate reading.

 Make allowances for your compass being affected by metallic or electrical energy fields, so take directions three times.

 Try to take directions at waist level for a better chi reading.

 Always have a floor plan nearby so you can mark in the directions immediately. This leaves less room for error.

8 – how to take compass directions

A good, solid compass will always have a dial that shows the degrees of all the eight directions, as well as the 24 subdivisions of the directions.

Before you can practice feng shui, you must familiarize yourself thoroughly with your compass. You should learn to read the directions so that you can instantly get the orientation of any place. If you do not get this orientation correctly measured out, it is really not possible to practice authentic Chinese feng shui.

Use a compass that has the degrees of the directions clearly marked.

Compass points

 A single compass point is represented by 360 degrees.

 Each of the four cardinal and four secondary directions occupies an angle of 45 degrees. Thus 45 multiplied by 8 makes 360 degrees. So when we extend the space from any single point occupied by any of the eight directions, the space we will be referring to is that which is contained within a 45-degree angle. You can see this if you consider each of the directions to be like a slice taken from a round pie – therefore, this method of reading the compass and identifying space is called the Pie Chart method. The main directions are north, south, east, and west. The secondary directions are northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest. Each of these directions occupies an angle of 45 degrees extended out from any single point of reference.

 Each of these 8 directions can be further subdivided into three, so each 45-degree angle can be subdivided into three 15-degree parts. These subdivisions are usually referred to as the mountains and, because there are a total of 24 subdivisions resulting from the 8 directions, there are said to be 24 mountains in the compass. Therefore, the 24 mountains refer to 15-degree subdivisions of the compass.

Take note that while the illustrations in this and all my feng shui books show the direction south at the top of any compass, this does not mean that south is on top when you are taking the directions of your home. You need the compass to find out where the south is in your home. You need the compass to point it out to you! It is the same with all the other directions and sub-directions.

9 – how to align a compass correctly

A key skill in feng shui is learning to align a compass correctly so that the direction indicated on the compass face shows a correct reading of the direction.

This is because the whole science of feng shui is predicated on the way direction energy moves and interacts within any given space.

It is useful to know that feng shui theory has much of its roots intertwined with the Taoist view of the Universe and of existence. Hence, the flow of chi energy is measured both within a microcosm as well as encompassing the entire macrocosm of space. It is up to us to delineate and define the space we are working with; we need to take the orientations of that space and also know the impact of the space that falls outside this boundary.

In feng shui language, this is referred to as the big tai chi – the bigger surrounding space – and the small tai chi, which can mean the space of the entire home, the space of the entire apartment building, or the space of the individual whole apartment. It can also mean the space of individual rooms. Understanding this concept of big and small tai chi opens up huge possibilities in applying and interpreting formulas. However, it also has implications when it comes to delineating compass sectors of rooms and homes.

What to do about varying readings

Localized accuracy is an important factor. This means learning to align the compass for the whole apartment or home, and then repeating it locally in each of the individual rooms for more accurate readings. It should not come as a surprise that every room would show some small variations in the readings of directions. In such cases, go with the localized reading, as this gives you the correct energy directions of the particular space being investigated.

When the difference in orientation and direction exceeds 15 degrees as you move from room to room, this could indicate some quite severe imbalance of the energy within a room or home. This is often a clue that the furniture arrangement and placement of decorative items is out of sync with the natural flow of energy there. It is then advisable to make some changes to the placement and arrangement of room furniture. One simple and effective method to get the balance right is to move the furniture around until the variation in readings falls below 5 degrees.

Use a ruler to make sure your compass is accurately aligned with a door or wall.

10 – determining the general direction of your home

When you start using your compass you may be faced with a dilemma about how you can best work out the correct orientation of your home.

Now that you know how to read the compass correctly and accurately, it is useful to clarify some of the points of confusion you will meet up with in the course of analyzing the personal feng shui of your own space, and also when you try to apply the Tips dealt with later in this book.

There can be quite a number of problem areas in feng shui; one of the more confusing issues facing the novice practitioner is how to determine the correct orientation of a home. Exactly which direction should we take if we are to determine the facing direction of a home? It is easy enough when a home is a perfect regular shape and the main door faces the same direction as the general orientation of the home itself – then there is no room for doubt whatsoever. But what if the door faces one direction, and the house is oriented to another direction? Which then is the direction to take for feng shui analysis and reference?

Finding a solution can be particularly troublesome, because different masters can recommend different approaches. So here are three important alternatives to consider when you are determining any orientations.

Of the three alternative orientations, I use my judgement on the basis of on-site investigation. All are feasible and have certain respectability. I personally know different masters who use all three different options based on their perception of the house being investigated, and all use this with some success. So my advice is to use your own judgement after duly considering each of the three options. Please also note that, in feng shui, homes that have a clearly defined main door have the best potential for enjoying continuous good fortune. Homes that lack this cause chi flow to be uncertain and unstable, thereby creating the cause of uncertain luck.

You can determine the general direction of your home by taking the direction of the main door facing a nearby road, or the door of the home that is most frequently used by the family. However, if you cannot decide which to use, walk around the house several times and feel exactly where maximum yang energy is coming from. Only then can you feel confident that the orientation you have taken is correct.

When you want to get the orientation of your home, start at the main door. Stand there and look out; the direction you are facing directly in front is the facing direction and this is generally regarded as the orientation of your home.

Three ways to take directions

1 Take the direction that is indicated by the main door, i.e. when you are standing at the largest entrance door looking out. Determine the direction that this door faces. This is one direction that can qualify as the main direction for you to use.

2 Take the direction that is indicated by the main road outside your house. This is the direction from which maximum yang energy comes into the home. So, if the house is oriented towards a road, take this as the facing orientation of the house, even if the main door itself actually faces another direction.

3 Take the direction of the door that is the most frequently used by the members of the family. This is because one definition of the main door is that which is most frequently used. As the main door is said to represent the “mouth” of the home, this is another correct orientation to take.

11 – finding the orientation of interior space

Another common problem faced by novice practitioners, especially those who have read different books on the subject, is how to determine the general orientation of the inside of the home.

When you are advised to activate a specific corner of your home confusion arises when the corner is indicated by its direction. For instance, if you are asked to activate the north in order to energize your career luck, this immediately begs a whole series of questions. How do you determine the north corner? Does this mean the north corner of the entire home? And, if so, what if the north corner is missing? and so on.

Taking these practical dilemmas one at a time, the first matter to be resolved is to learn to determine the orientations of the home so you can identify the eight compass “corners” on your floor plan. To do this correctly, once again you will need to take directions with a compass. In authentic feng shui, orientations always require the compass and they are never determined by the location of the main door. Orientations should never be calculated according to the main door having a fixed direction. I have received thousands of emails asking about this, mainly because some practitioners trained in another method of feng shui use this method. In Chinese feng shui, this is not the way to do it.

Take compass directions inside the main door and again a few feet further inside.

Take a third compass direction from the center of your home. If your home is an irregular shape, mark in missing areas on your floor plan and draw diagonal lines (as shown) to find its center.

12 – understanding the lo shu square

The next step in practical feng shui is to familiarize yourself with one of the most important, and effective, feng shui symbols that can be used on your floor plan.

This is the Lo Shu Square, which is a ninesector grid, each containing a number from 1 to 9. The numbers are arranged in the grid so that when any three numbers are added, they add up to 15, which is also the number of days it takes the moon to grow from a new moon to a full moon, and vice versa. The Chinese Taoist scholars regard the Lo Shu as a magic square and believe that it provides the key to unlocking many of the secrets of feng shui’s other important symbol, the eight-sided Pa Kua (see here and here.)

According to legend, the magical Lo Shu Square of numbers was carried on the back of the celestial tortoise and brought to the attention of the Chinese Emperor, Fu Hsi. So today, the tortoise is revered as an auspicious creature whose body and shell are said to conceal special design motifs that contain all the secrets contained in heaven and earth.

I started writing books about feng shui soon after I picked up the shell of a dead turtle that had been washed up on the shore on a seaside vacation trip to Pangkor Island with my family. That was in 1992. At that time I failed to note the significance of that omen, and although I brought the shell back home, I discarded it soon afterwards. I only realized the symbolism while one day meditating by my pond where my pet terrapins lived (terrapins are domestic tortoises and turtles are the marine relations of the freshwater tortoise.) It was while I observed the patterns on the back of these playful creatures that the significance of that symbolic find struck me.

Later, as you go deeper into your practice of feng shui, you will discover how important and clever the Lo Shu Square of numbers is when it comes to both hiding and revealing the secrets of formula and compass feng shui. For now, just familiarize yourself with the Lo Shu Square, its numbers and directions, and how it can be used to demarcate the layout of your floor plan.

13 – placing the lo shu square over a floor plan

Now you have learnt the basics about the importance of the Lo Shu Square, you can experiment with placing it over your home’s floor plan.

While this is easy enough to do if the layout of your home is a perfect square, unfortunately this is seldom the case – most homes do have an irregular layout.

Modern homes are rarely, if ever, perfectly square or rectangular. In hallways or in the rooms there will be missing corners and protruding corners, and sometimes the shapes are so irregular that even the real chi that enters gets confused by the flow which is created by the unusual shape of the home.

You also need to know whether to include or exclude portions of the home that appear to protrude. Also, what about including areas occupied by garages, patios, decks, or verandas? In view of the great many variations of house plans and shapes, superimposing the nine-sector grid is therefore something of a challenge to those unfamiliar with feng shui applications. Here are a few specific guidelines that I have put together, based on my experience and advice given to me by practicing feng shui masters.

To superimpose the Lo Shu Square over an irregular-shaped home, extend the missing areas on your floor plan. When you overlay the square you will see which area of it you are missing. Here, the southwest is missing, which is associated with love and relationships.