Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Fake Feng Shui Classics


A famous Feng Shui master Kwan Fung Cheung (Cantonese) 關鳳翔 published an excellent book in 1971: The Principles of Kan Yu 堪輿學原理. In my opinion, it is the best Feng Shui book ever written. Here I will summarize the last section of Chapter 3 in this book.

The author categorized five types of fake Feng Shui books as follows:


[1]  Someone discovered truth about Feng Shui and believed that his ideas were better than those of his predecessors. However, since he was just an unknown small potato, no one would pay much attention to his discovery. Therefore, he published his book under the name of a famous Feng Shui master. Examples are (1) Challenging the Dragon Classic 撼龍經 (2) Suspecting the Dragon 疑龍經  (3) Song of Formulation Leaking Heaven’s Way     天機入式歌  (4) The Precise Theory of Spiritual Castle 靈城精義. These are all valuable Feng Shui books but the authors were people who did not have a big name. Therefore, famous people were used to name the authors of the books. (1) and (2) were assigned to Yang Yun Song 楊筠松. (3) was assigned to Liao Yu 廖瑀. (4) was assigned to He Ling Tong 何令通.

   [2]  A good book was written by an anonymous author. Some nosey parker assigned the name of a famous master to be the author of the book. For example, Guo Pu 郭璞 was assigned to be the author of the celebrated Burial Book 葬書.

   [3]  Classic of the Green Bag 青囊經 was non-existent meaning there was no such book at all. In the Burial Book, this sentence appears 15 times: The Classic says, “……”.  There was a fake book written after the Tang Dynasty by an unknown author. It was assigned the title Burial Classic 葬經 with author Qing Wu Zi 青烏子.  The title of the book was later changed to Classic of the Green Bag 青囊經.

   [4]   Some very good books were written by scholars. However, they had a much higher social ranking than Feng Shui masters. They were ashamed of disclosing the fact that they were good in this art. Therefore, they employed the name of Feng Shui masters who lived generations before to be the authors of the books. For example, Snow Heart Song 雪心賦 is such a book.

   [5]   Some books were written in unintelligible language because the author was an uneducated person. An example of this type is Heaven Jade Classic 天玉經. It was a book written by some follower of the Daoist Religion. The structure and style of writing can be described best as gibberish. It was taken as concealing secrets of Feng Shui as the terms like Xuan Kong and Aixing can be found in the book. However, this book has nothing to do with Feng Shui of graves or houses at all. Later, charlatans used this book to teach whatever they wanted in different ways. They all claimed to have the uniquely passed down secrets with weird annotations.

Well, most people in the field of Feng Shui would disagree to particularly #5. They would say that the book has the topmost secrets concealed and without a genuine lineage, no matter how clever you are, you simply cannot decode the secrets. I can only wish them good luck to continue live in their dream world.

It must be noted that what Master Kwan listed are only the more obvious fake books. Feng Shui is actually a very rigorous subject based on observation and logical deduction. The only thing that prevents Feng Shui from becoming a science is the Man part of Cosmic Trinity because two different persons can react differently to the same qi.



If anyone sells you courses with wild claims of lineage, just forget it. 



Saturday, February 8, 2014

What is Qi Men Dun Jia? (1)

Qi Men Dun Jia has suddenly become a hot subject and a lot of different teachings sprout out like Spring bamboo shoots after the rain 雨後春笋. I will first introduce the first stanza of the famous  Song of the Old Fisherman on the Misty Waters 煙波釣叟歌 in my blog.












Monday, January 13, 2014

Face Reading (Mian Xiang 面相)

A lot of people ask me whether I teach Face Reading. The answer is "No!"

I do not teach anything I do not practice professionally. The reason why I do not practice this art professionally is because it is not my cup of tea. To my understanding, there is a physical part and a spiritual part of Face Reading. The physical part is black and white while the spiritual part relies a lot on your feeling. It is not easy to integrate them together. It doesn't mean I am against the study and practice of Face Reading. In fact, I encourage my students to learn this art from various sources. 

Recently practitioners of Feng Shui Research Center have compiled a Face Reading course. I helped them with understanding some teachings from ancient books. I do not want to take credit for my contribution. The course they developed is their joint effort with some suggestion of translation of terms from me.  

Sometimes when we read an ancient book, we must read it with a skeptical eye. This is particularly true when several people were involved in the editorial work over the centuries. There are obvious mistakes but unfortunately the mistakes are continuously passed on and spread by many authors of today. 

Officially I have developed Feng Shui courses, Destiny courses including Four Pillars and Zi Wei Dou Shu, and Divination courses including Plum Blossom Divination, Wen Wang Gua, Qi Men Dun Jia and Da Liu Ren. Qi Men Dun Jia is the study of qi at a particular time and is not really classified under divination. This I will explain later. Face Reading is a professional course developed by FSRC trained masters but it is not exactly an official FSRC course because it is not developed by myself. 

I have seen the work of these highly recommended masters and I am happy they can help people with their knowledge.