WHAT IS FENG SHUI DÉCOR?
History of Feng Shui
Feng Shui Placement of Furniture, Art Objects in the Home and Office. Wall décor: according to principles of Feng Shui Chinese philosophy.
Visit Dragon-Gate.com Online Chinese Feng Shui Retail and Resource Center
Viewers are taken on a tour of a private residence used as an example of applied Feng Shui through the rearrangement of furniture, how those rearrangements conform to nature, and how they will affect the lives and well-being of the household residents. All of the principles are readily applicable to the viewer's own home and physical surroundings. Find Balance & Harmony is highly recommended viewing for all students of Feng Shui and its practical application in daily life.
WHAT IS FENG SHUI?
Feng Shui or fengshui
is the ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement of space to achieve
harmony with the environment that has its origins from Taoism. The practice is
estimated to be more than three thousand years old.
"Feng Shui" literally means "wind and water" in Chinese.
Overview
Traditional ("classical," "authentic") feng shui is a Chinese ethnoscience that
addresses the design and layout of cities, villages, dwellings, and buildings.
The construction of graves and tombs also includes feng shui, but the rules for
dwellings differ from those applied to "yin houses" (houses of the dead). Feng
shui was labeled geomancy by 19th-century Christian missionaries to China;
however, geomancy and feng shui differ widely in their scope, aims, and means.
Traditional feng shui uses a specialized compass called a Luopan, and a
comprehensive array of calculations involving mathematical iterations. It has
foundation texts, core theories and methods, and an impressive past based on
archaeological discoveries and the work of archeoastronomers. The New Age
versions — Black Hat Sect, Pyramid Feng Shui, Fuzion, Intuitive, etc. — do not
share this history. These offshoots typically use "intuitive" methods with
concepts from the 19th-century Spiritualist movement, and self-help techniques
and affirmations, along with modern interior design.
For example, the Black Hat Sect version of feng shui, which began in 1960s Hong
Kong (and incorporated as a US church in 1986), explains feng shui as the art of
arranging objects within a home to obtain an optimum flow of qi. In traditional
feng shui, the objects within a structure are of lesser significance than the
siting of a building and its local environment, especially microclimates. It's
believed by many that individuals using New Age methods seek to profit from
naďve consumers by explaining New Age versions as "classical" or traditional"
feng shui. Yet, according to recent fieldwork in rural China by Ole Bruun, qi
flow is rarely a concern in traditional feng shui.
I Ching
Chinese Fortune Telling System
Traditional Feng Shui began as an interplay of construction and astronomy. Early
Yangshao houses at Banpo (c. 4800 BCE) were oriented to catch the mid-afternoon
sun at its warmest a few days after the winter solstice. (Some tribes in
southern China still refer to this month as "House-building Month.") Professor
David Pankenier and his associates performed retrospective computation on the
Chinese sky at the time of the Banpo dwellings to show that the asterism Yingshi
(Lay out the Hall, in the Warring States period and early Han era) corresponded
to the sun's location at this time.
The asterism Yingshi was known as Ding during the Zhou era. Ding was used to
indicate the appropriate time and orientation for a capital city, according to
the Shijing. All capital cities of China, including Beijing, follow this design.
The rules for capital cities and other habitations can be found in the Zhou-era
Kaogong ji (Manual of Crafts). Rules for builders were codified in the Lu ban
jing (Carpenter's Manual).
A grave at Puyang (4000 BCE) that contains mosaics of the Dragon and Tiger
constellations and Beidou (Big Dipper) is similarly oriented along a north-south
axis, and it includes the classical "heaven-round, earth-square" design applied
to other buildings in China at varying periods, and was used in the design of
the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.
At Taosi the traditional home of King Yao, an observatory (c. 2400 BCE) with 12
sighting windows may have been used as mentioned in Yaodian (in the Shijing) and
Wudibenji (in the Shiji), as Yao assigned astronomers to observe sunrise,
sunset, and evening stars in culmination. According to astronomers, Yao's
pronouncement of the four major constellations is consistent with the astronomy
for the age of the observatory.
 |
Large Rock Juniper - $ 49.00 |
See
More Bonsai Gifts
The tombs of Shang kings and their consorts at the cemetery of Xiaotun near
Anyang lie on a north-south axis, ten degrees east of due north. The Xia and
Shang palaces at Erlitou are also on a north-south axis, slightly west of true
north. These orientations were obtained by astronomy, perhaps using liuren
astrolabes; the magnetic compass or zhinan zhen was not invented until the early
Han era.
The history of feng shui devices may have begun at Lingjiatan c. 3000 BCE. An
excavated grave contained a jade plaque with a compass design. (Similar markings
were also found on pottery from the Taihu region.) The “arrows” point to
cardinal and intercardinal directions. Noted historian Li Xueqin and other
researchers indicate this is an early version of a liuren astrolabe, the
ancestor of the more well-known feng shui devices shi, shipan, and Luopan.
Other feng shui devices consist of two-sided boards with astronomical
sightlines. Liuren astrolabes have been unearthed intact from Qin-era tombs at
Wangjiatai and Zhoujiatai. These devices date between 278 BC and 209 BC.
Today feng shui practitioners can select from three types of Luopan: San He (the
so-called "form school", although the compass name means "Triple Combination"),
San Yuan (the so-called "compass school", although the compass name actually
refers to time), and the Zong He that combines the other two.
Feng Shui in More Recent Times
During the early 1800s feng shui was introduced to the US with the first Chinese
immigrants. The notorious Four Corners section of New York, which was then a
Chinese ghetto, featured gambling houses and other structures that incorporated
feng shui, as did the Chinatowns in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In
19th-century Australia, the Joss House was built using feng shui. It has also
been practiced by western "hongs" or trading companies to satisfy local business
communities and to encourage luck in business.
Since the mid-20th century, feng shui has been illegal in the PRC, primarily
because Mao Zedong (who had studied feng shui) denounced many practitioners'
propensity for fraud. Other reasons have been suggested, which is why a
department of the Chinese government was assigned to oversee its use. Ole
Bruun's fieldwork has shown that during the Cultural Revolution, most feng shui
practitioners had their books burnt, were persecuted and jailed, and underwent
extreme privations for their knowledge of ancient Chinese culture. Very few were
willing or had the means to leave the country.
Feng shui is still used in rural China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong
Kong. It is not well-known among younger Chinese in the People's Republic of
China (PRC). However, rapid modernization of China has led to feng shui becoming
a worthy subject for scholarly inquiry at Chinese universities. As Chinese
scholars increasingly work with their counterparts in the rest of the world, a
new picture is emerging of the history and application of this ancient science.
Postmodernism
The Getty Center in Los Angeles, allegedly an articulation of feng shui, though
there is little evidence.The famous Bank of China Tower on Hong Kong Island, a
blade-like design by I.M. Pei (not a feng shui adept), was supposedly a
deliberate curse upon the Government House and the former British
administration. No updated version of this fable exists to explain effects on
the current occupants.
Architects and landscape designers around the world are increasingly asked to
include feng shui principles in their designs, even in places that do not
include significant Asian populations. Regardless of the country of practice,
businesses generally use feng shui to increase sales and boost morale.
Homeowners may apply it as interior decorating or during the design and
construction of a home.
The interest in feng shui principles has apparently accelerated in recent years
with young designers' increased knowledge of microclimates, green building
techniques, the threat of global warming, E.O. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis,
and as a design reaction to the "inhuman" spaces of Modernism.
The source of this article is
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this
article is licensed under the
GFDL
Real Ways to Get Rich on the Internet!
Post nasal drip, lose weight, diabetes, Alzheimer's, more
How to Cope with Life's Problems
how to clean athletic shoes, get rid of roaches