Feng Shui Schools

Why is Feng Shui so confusing?
Have you read lots of Feng Shui books but they seem to give different advice? Have you looked at loads of Feng Shui websites and still confused? One book says use a compass, the other one doesn't even mention a compass! One web site says put water in the north part of your home, another web site says just put a resin tortoise there.
This confusion is because there are many forms of Feng Shui or "schools" of Feng Shui, as they are known. When you read a Feng Shui book or web site, unless you have had training in Feng Shui, you would not know which type you are reading about and is why most people don't understand it. Here we will clarify the issue.

Form School Feng Shui
Form school is how feng shui was originally practiced thousands of years ago before the invention of the magnetic compass. There is evidence that Neolithic people as far back as 4,000 BC used Form School techniques. These ancient people studied the land and how the land affected their lives and from this, they learnt how best to site their homes and villages.  Getting the forms right ensured plentiful harvests and healthy livestock, thereby ensuring their own prosperity. Today using Form School means analysing natural features such  as trees, hills, mountains and water in the form of rivers and lakes. In the urban environment, this also includes other buildings, garages and walls and fences. All these have an impact on a particular site. This type of Feng Shui is still relevant today, and in particular, is an important part of Flying Star Feng Shui.

Black Hat Feng Shui
Feng shui came to the attention of the west very recently, within the last twenty years or so with the introduction from America of what is known as "Black Hat Feng Shui" or " Black Sect Tantric Buddhist Feng Shui". This system is an attempt to simplify Feng Shui and to make it available to all without having to learn or take into account the extremely complex rules of Traditional Chinese Feng Shui.
Black Hat Feng Shui uses the Ba Gua, sometimes called the Feng Shui Energy Map or Ba Gua Grid which divides a building into forty-five degree segments. The Ba Gua is overlaid onto a floor plan of your home and your door or entrance will always be in either your Career area, your Knowledge/Spirituality area or your Travel/Helpful People area. These divisions are known are sometimes known as the "Eight Life Aspirations" or "Eight Life Stations". In its original form, Black Hat Feng Shui does not use a compass and so does not take into account the magnetic influence of our environment.

Does this Feng Shui system work?
This form of Feng Shui tends to rely on the power of a positive mind. In other words, if you believe that the money toad near your front door is making you money every time you venture outside, your own positive mind will help you to achieve it. If you believe that the two mandarin ducks in your relationship area are helping you find a new partner, then, of course, you are more open to new possibilities. All these things are intended to keep you positive and focused on your goals. If you like them in your home, that's fine, but they would not be used by a Traditional Chinese Feng Shui consultant.

The problems come when you are not having a "positive day" - the phone bill has just come in and is bigger than expected, your boss at work has just given you a huge workload and expects it completed by tomorrow, you have a list of things to do which just seem impossible given the time you have... In other words, how long can you keep positive for? You may have read books or websites about Feng Shui and actually used Black Hat Feng Shui in your home. You probably got results, but did they last?

Compass School Feng Shui
The second system is the one most written about in books and in magazines, purely because it is the simplest and easiest to explain. It is where the compass directions are used together with the Ba Gua. You would take a rough compass bearing of your home and each section of the Ba Gua will fall into one of the eight compass directions. Each compass bearing is associated with an element and to use this system, you simply add the relevant element to the area of the Ba Gua. So, in the north you add water; in the south, you add fire, etc.
Compass School Feng Shui does not take into account the effects that time has on a building. After all, you are not the same as you were ten years ago and neither is your home. Unfortunately, this extremely simplified version of Traditional Chinese Feng Shui is, by definition, not as accurate or personal to you and your surroundings and therefore not as effective or long lasting as the more advanced methods.

Traditional Chinese Feng Shui - Advice specific to you and your home.
Traditional Chinese Feng Shui is not a religion or a superstition. It does not require you to place certain objects in certain places to reinforce positive thoughts. It is based on logic, total common sense and a complete understanding of natural life and the way nature affects us.
Traditional or classical Chinese feng shui also uses a compass, although it is a Luo Pan, a complicated Chinese compass accurate to within one degree, not forty five degrees as with Black Hat and the other systems. In addition, and just as importantly, the effects of time on a building are taken into account. The calculations used by an authentic feng shui consultant are detailed and extremely complex and, having been perfected over the last 5,000 years, have stood the test of time.
This degree of accuracy ensures that a Feng Shui consultation using traditional methods, combined with Chinese Astrology is extremely specific to you, your family and your home, not generalised, where one size fits all. The Traditional methods are those used by Feng Shui Works.

Some people call it luck; our clients know it as Feng Shui!

E-mail Alison enquiries@fengshuiworks.co.uk