The World of Feng Shui

Chinese New Year is just around the corner, one of the activities most Chinese would do leading to the Chinese New Year apart from getting new clothes and preparing the house to usher in the New Year is to check on Feng Shui (風水) and Bazi as well as the Chinese Zodiacs to ensure that their new year would be smoother and better than the previous year.

Even I do that, yes, about this time of year, one of the few activities I do online was to go online and check out the various feng shui sites as well as chinese zodiac sites. I even posted one up for those born in the years of the Dragon. One thing to make clear is that I’m not a person who can read Feng Shui or understand it’s intricate language, for that I rely on a friend who I refers to whenever I’m curious about something or rather when it comes to Feng Shui and Bazi. After all, who wouldn’t want to do something to improve their own life and all. Right?

I know many people are skeptical about it, like can such thing really help with our lives? I can’t speak for others but from personal experience, even if it doesn’t make you an instant millionaire (I don’t think there’s such a sure fire way but if you know of one, please let me know!), it did help me to be more observant, more careful on certain things.

To give you an idea what Feng Shui, BaZi and Chinese Zodiac is about, here’s a rough summary from what I could gather online.

Feng Shui: It’s an ancient art and science developed over 3,000 years ago in China. It is a complex body of knowledge that reveals how to balance the energies of any given space to assure the health and good fortune for people inhabiting it. Based on the Taoist vision and understanding of nature and it’s energy, Ancient Chinese believed that the land’s energy could either make or break the kingdom, so to speak. The theories of yin and yang, as well as the five feng shui elements, are some of the basic aspects of a feng shui analysis that come from Taoism.

I’m sure you could find loads of information about Feng Shui online, and if you’re interested to study this discipline, be warn that it take years to understand and to fully learn how to maximize this ancient art. I’ve seen some people’s life practically changed due to Feng Shui, by just changing the direction the person seats, the position of the entrance to the office/door. The change that happened was incredible.

One thing to note is that there’s several different schools of Feng Shui, as well as a strong culturally specific symbolic aspect of feng shui that you have to use intelligently. Different masters have different interpretation and mastery. In Malaysia, one of the most famous Feng Shui master is Grand Master Yap Cheng Hai. To hire him to do a reading isn’t cheap, some friends say that he has reached such a mastery level where even before a person steps into his office, he knows well enough whether the person wants to use the feng shui reading for good or bad. A good reading if you’re interested is his recent interview with The Star for his thoughts for the year 2009, click here to read.

Businesses the world over consults feng shui masters, especially companies run by chinese businessmen, even countries like Singapore and China relies on Feng Shui to ensure that their own respective country prosper through the years.

BaZi: The Chinese Four Pillars of Destiny or Ba Zi is a branch of study of Chinese Metaphysics Science. The Four Pillars Chart is derived from the Date of Birth of a Person using the Chinese Solar Calendar, which is also known as the Hsia Calendar or Farmer’s Calendar. For more accurate reading, some masters even ask for the time of your birth to ensure that the reading is detail.

This chart is used to forecast the destiny and characteristics of an individual and the relationships and interaction between the individual with the surrounding environment:The theory behind the study of four pillars is that The Sun, Moon, Earth; planets in the Solar System emit cosmic energy (chi) all the time. This Cosmic energy is not constant but varies with time depending on the relative positions of the planets.

The Chinese has discovered a few thousand years ago that at any point of time the energy field (chi) surrounding us can be mapped and represented by a combination of 22 characters known as the Ten Heavenly Stems and Twelve Earthy Branches. This in turn is known as the Hsia Calendar. This calendar is also used for feng shui and for another branch of Chinese Astrology known as Purple Star astrology.

When a person is born and takes the first breath of air, the influence of this cosmic energy on the newborn is said to map the destiny and characteristics of that particular person. In the study of Ba Zi, one has to understand the characteristics and meanings of the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. Upon understanding these characters, the interaction of these characters between each other can be used to foretell the story. If you want to know more, the best is to talk to a Master who can properly guide you through the BaZi world.

The last one is the Chinese Zodiac, according to wikipedia, The Chinese Zodiac is a 12-year cycle. Each year of the 12-year cycle is named after one of the original 12 animals. Each animal has a different personality and different characteristics. The animal is believed to be the main factor in each person’s life that gives them their traits, success and happiness in their lifetime.

The Chinese zodiac refers to a pure calendrical cycle; there are no equivalent constellations like those of the occidental zodiac. In imperial times there were astrologers who watched the sky for heavenly omens that would predict the future of the state, but this was a quite different practice of divination from the popular present-day methods.

According to Chinese mysterious astronomy, a person’s destiny can be determined by the position of the major planets at the person’s birth along with the positions of the Sun, Moon and comets and the person’s time of birth and Zodiac Sign. The system of the twelve-year cycle of animal signs was built from observations of the orbit of Jupiter. Following the orbit of Jupiter around the sun, Chinese astronomers divided the celestial circle into 12 sections or 12 years.

A laborious system of computing one’s fate and destiny based on one’s birthday and birth hours, known as Zi Wei Dou Shu (Chinese: 紫微斗數) is still used regularly in modern day Chinese astrology to divine one’s fortune. How does it really work, I can’t really explain but you can read about it here.

For me, what I know about the Chinese Zodiac is what I read about my own during Chinese New Year and what was shown on TV. Yes, Every year without fail, when you tune in to Chinese channels on TV, you’ll have this one guy sitting on a nice chair next to a TV host explaining to the audience what they should look out for in relation to their zodiac signs. The Chinese zodiac also serves the practical purpose of figuring out a person’s age without having to ask directly and risk offending someone.

Well, that’s all I could gather regarding all the things I look at comes Chinese New Year. What about you? Do you believe in Feng Shui? BaZi? Chinese Zodiacs?

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