The Roots of Feng Shui: Geomancy

The Modern Book of Feng Shui
by Steven Post

The Modern Book of Feng Shui is the ultimate tool for employing Feng Shui, or the ancient Chinese art of placement, to enrich your life. Whether in the workplace or in the home, this guide is the perfect first step in establishing harmony with the energy, or chi, through additions and awareness of your surroundings.

Practiced for centuries in China, Feng Shui has been utilized by the world's largest corporations and by influential individuals in planning their businesses and homes. The Modern Book of Feng Shui contains the history and secrets of this ancient art. Through words and pictures, let it guide you in assessing your environment and employing time-honored principles and techniques of the art to maximize the symmetry and space of your life. Put the secrets of Feng Shui to work for you!

Having good physiognomy is not as good as having good fate,
Having good fate is not as good as having good heart,
Having good heart is not as good as having good luck,
Having good luck is not as good as having good chi.

All traditional cultures have their own systems of geomancy. Feng Shui is the Chinese interpretation of geomancy. The term geomancy combines the Greek words Gaea, meaning "the Mother Earth" and manteia, meaning "a system of divination or knowledge." Geomancy is, therefore, a way of knowing the earth. The word entered the English language in about 1569 and first referred to particular forms of divination, and its meaning broadened to include special forms of skillfulness that have to do with uniting people and places in harmony.

For modern society, Feng Shui addresses practical questions — such as where to put a bed or desk or how to site and arrange a home or business — to benefit career, health, marriage, or fame. Both Feng Shui and geomancy can also be used on a larger scale, from community and urban planning to planetary and local healing, balance, and attunement.

The Nature of the Home

How we live in and think about our home reflects our understanding of comfort. Being at home and feeling at home is important and should give one a similar feeling to the home-team advantage of sports.

Our home environment is a perfect expression of our psychological and spiritual state. It is a wonderful tool to understanding ourselves, and a powerful way to catalyze greater harmony within us to make changes to the home. The material environment does not lie. If we block our movement path or prevent our doors from fully opening or block physical progress through the house, we are providing the universe with a message that we are not ready for complete access to life's bounty. Normal maintenance, cleanliness, beauty, and space have both mundane and transcendental meanings.

The First Sight Upon Entering: The Feeling and Tone of Your Home

Houses, like people, have definite personalities and this place is positively ghoulish.

— Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death

In the practice of Feng Shui, your first impression as you enter a home or room is very important. By crossing a threshold you enter a new environment or another world. You experience particular qualities, moods, and presences, both visible and invisible, that condition our homes and workplaces and influence our lives. For this reason be in a state of unity with Divine Mind and Universal being. Step across the threshold with your left foot if a man, right foot if a woman. Use the dispelling evil mudra and the speech secret from the Three Secret Reinforcements. Open your heart and mind. What do you notice and feel?

Levels of influence begin before we enter. The way we come home or go to work has its significance. If the walkway to the front door is smooth and easy, or difficult, with twists, turns, and blockages, our chi, in either case, is affected. Find a creative way, employing methods suggested herein and your own solutions, to make the path to the front door and entrance into the house a positive experience.

When we enter, the first sight that comes into our view and the movement path we follow is significant. Our chi is drawn by the first things we see and by how we proceed into the home or workplace. The first sight upon entering principle takes these factors into account and elaborates on their meaning. In the Feng Shui community of knowledge, this unique point of view was developed by Professor Lin. What we see, and where we go, strongly determines the lives we lead. I once asked Professor Lin if we could call this idea "the what you see is what you get" principle. He replied that perhaps this term might not be completely accurate, for otherwise, if it were strictly so, many of us might spend our time hanging out at the bank.

Edith Wharton pointed out that while "the main purpose of a door is to admit, its secondary purpose is to exclude." An entry area, foyer, or vestibule is a transitional place. Ideally it should be spacious, bright, and able to assist the transition from the outer world to the inner sanctum of the home. It should provide a sense of scope, promise, and safety.

Thomas Jefferson had a marvelous sense of the importance of the entry area at Monticello, because he used this space to instruct and enlighten a visitor. A visitor saw a museum of clocks, fossils, paintings of historical subjects, sculptures, maps of the world, and Native American artifacts.

You may hang a metal wind chime or a multifaceted spherical glass crystal from the ceiling in the entry area to encourage clarity, focus, and mental acuity. Place a personally inspiring image, according to your own system of belief, as a spiritual reminder, which you will see as you enter or leave your home to recall and motivate you to your highest purpose.

Copyright © 1998 by Steven Post. Excerpted by permission of Dell, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.