Feng Shui Is No Magic (魔术风水?)

Before anyone go and spend a hefty sum of money on Feng Shui gadgets, I must reiterate that Feng Shui is no magic. There are many seemingly true but false Feng Shui remedies being thrown out by unscrupulous folks just to fish out money from the unwary. For example, my pal Mr. Ooi spent MYR20K to purchase a boulder to be located at the back of his house as the Feng Shui master said Ooi’s house hasn’t the backing of a mountain (靠山).

 

Needless to say, this is indeed ridiculous if a boulder can take the place of an actual mountain range. If it is true, then we can perhaps throw all Feng Shui theories out of the window. There was no need then for the previous masters to risk their lives and spent years tracking mountain ranges in deep jungles just to seek for a good dragon knot (正龙结).

 

There is a term in Feng Shui called "attached onto small land" (勾撘小地) that means although the piece of land contains waters and hills; its chi still considered as 'thin' (气势单薄). Likewise if a boulder is used in lieu of a mountain and it is located too near a house, then not only the chi is insufficient, it will create troubles when the "yellow five" (五黄煞) and "three killings" (三煞) stars arrived at the location.

 

Similarly, small islands or group of islands also falls into the small land category and that it would be extremely difficult to make a reasonable living on small islands. Nothing can change this fact, unfortunately. If you still don't believe me, open up a map of the world and look at places with plenty of small islands and you will agree with what I have just said.

 

A Discourse On Yearly Lord (也谈太岁)

In places where Chinese community congregates, we can find various magazines on Chinese horoscopes (运程书) starting from the 4^th quarter of every year flocking local newspaper stalls. Needless to say that these types of publications bring lucrative profits to the authors while increasing their fames and exposures to general public.

 

There is a magazine stall just downstairs and the owner is my acquaintance. Once he asked me to recommend a good forecast magazine but I only smiled and replied him that: “I can’t comment as I never read such stuffs!”

 

Despite my lack of interest, at the beginning of every Chinese New Year, the Chinese people will want to know if he/she is ‘in conflict’ with the yearly lord (犯太歲) and if he/she does, what kind of amulets to wear and what kind of ritual to perform to alleviate ill effects if any. To say this honestly, I never believe in this type of thing as there are many factors affecting the luck of a person.

 

According to original teachings, one is in conflict only with the yearly animal when his/her year of birth (生肖) is directly opposite (冲太岁) to current yearly lord; such as the rat is in conflict with the horse (子午冲); and when his/her year of birth is same as current year, then it is termed ‘at the back’ of the yearly lord (伏太歲).

 

No one knows since when other unrelated issues were added to this conflicting aspect with the yearly lord until such a stage that nearly a third of our Chinese population is in conflict in any given year. The unrelated issues I meant are simply: hurt (刑), union (合) ，harm (害) and break (破).

 

Perhaps those ingenious businesses minded folks wanted to market their amulets for profiting… on second thought, if such gadgets can make people happy; so be it.

 

Feng Shui also makes use of yearly lord to determine if one should perform renovation at a particular location. There is a saying that goes:

 

"太岁可坐不可向。"

"It is alright to sit on yearly lord but never face it."

 

Having said so, for the experienced; one can certainly temper with yearly lord to get a quick profit. This can be done by choosing one’s auspicious date to counter ill effects of tempering with this yearly lord.

 

Possessed By Spirits! (厉鬼缠身!)

 

 

This person is possessed by a kid spirit and a crow spirit. See if you can notice both spirits? This is a reminder for people who like to temper with spirits! My pal complaint that there are voices call him to jump down from his balcony. No joking!

 

 

If you still can't see the spirits... Again, for your entertainment purposes only.

 

What’s In A Name? (姓名与环境)

If you say that the “science of names” (姓名学) is part of our occult treasure, then I would rather choose not to believe in this practice. Even though there were and still are many people come to me to ask for auspicious names; I only reply them:

 

“Whatever names you opt will be fine provided that they’re not against the norm (犯忌)!”

 

Perhaps now you would ask: “What did you mean by ‘norm’?”

 

I think some examples would be in order…

 

Story 1

 

Mr. Fischer is my German pal who was a proud owner of a restaurant in Penang. We were acquaintance when we serve a German manufacturing company a few years ago. Fischer decided to settle down in Penang and engage in his restaurant specialized in German cuisine. Fischer’s business was extremely good and earned himself quite a small fame within the German communities and some western food lovers in Penang in relative short time.

 

Fischer’s success has made him ambitious and wanting to expand his restaurant business to Ipoh in the central part of peninsula. Prior to the execution of Fisher’s plan, we met in his restaurant to have a mug of beer as usual and I cautioned Fisher on his ambitious move as Ipoh is not in sync with his name ‘Fischer’ or ‘fisher’. You see:

 

Ipoh is known as a ‘town amongst hills’ (山城), there is practically no place for a ‘fisherman’ to catch a fish on hills! If a fisherman stay put in Penang Island, then there are certainly plenty fish to catch!

 

However, Fischer wasn’t a superstitious person and we bottom up on our last bear before this gentleman opened his second restaurant near a shopping mall in Ipoh Garden.

 

I visited Fischer’s Ipoh branch one night after my errant for a supper a year later only to learn from the boss that his business wasn’t very good although the number of customers were encouraging in the beginning. In fact, I was the only customer on that night!

 

Story 2

 

John and Xiang (香) are two lawyers opened up a law firm in downtown Penang. They decided to name the law firm “Xiang John” (香佐) associates. Well, the “Xiang John” means ‘kaput’ or ‘finish’ in Cantonese. The best part of this story is that their law firm is facing a florist parlor and a casket distributor!

 

We may call it all attributed to their bad karma, the law firm ended business in a relatively short time. This is really in line with ‘kaput’ as the meaning implies.

  

I supposed the failures of above two stories may or may not relate to their names; what I am sure is that one can never change one’s luck by changing his/her names alone. That I can assure you as I have personally consulted many people who has altered their names and yet still faced with bankruptcy.

 

The Fallacy Of Migration

When a person has settled and sinks in the culture of a place for quite a while, it would be extremely difficult to persuade him/her to migrate to a totally foreign land. Someone would attribute this to culture shock; you may call it fear of the unknown if you so wish desires. You would be surprised that even a simple location change within a country would also be quite traumatic to many folks so to speak. Only those who have moved frequently understand what I meant.

 

There are many telltale signs in astrology if a person will migrate to a foreign land or otherwise. If the stars for migration are good, then the migration would be auspicious and if the stars are far from ideal; then the migration spells disaster.

 

Some time ago a friend of mine migrated to the central part of Canada. He came to me for an astrology consultation session but I advised him to knock off the idea as his stars showed that his migration would be disastrous. However, my pal said that his wife and he have made up their mind for the benefit of their offspring. I had nothing else to say but bid them bon voyage and asked him to take care.

 

A year later, I received an email from my pal saying that he has settled down in Canada and that he has purchased a house facing true north; and that the house was selected by his friend who was also well versed in the art of Feng Shui. So I wished him good luck and glad that he has finally settled down in a foreign land.

 

Another year lapsed, I received another mail from my pal mentioning that he has suffered from some sort of brain cancer and had been plying between his house and hospital for some time. He decided to send me a mail as he has remembered that I had warned him of potential danger.

 

I asked my pal to send pictures of his house as I was intrigued by the so called auspicious house chosen by the Feng Shui master. It transpired from the pictures that even though the flying stars were good; the geographical location was not:

 

The house was a 7^th period house but the front of the house was facing a hill while there was a ravine at the back. This forms a condition called “up the mountain and down the hill” (上山下水) and it is a big no-no to chose to stay in such a house as anyone who stays in the house would face bankruptcy and loss of life.

 

I replied my pal’s mail and asked him to move house but I didn’t received any respond. Things went quiet for a while until I heard the news of my pal’s death from an email chain last year.

 

Apparently speaking, not everyone can benefit from a migration. There is no secret about the whole situation as the secret is in individual’s star chart. Call this one’s destination if you may.

 

Good Place, Bad Timing: Trouble (择日漫谈)

Ordinary people view Feng Shui as the science of choosing a dwelling and grave; the practitioner view Feng Shui as a science that combines astrology with space planning. A not so auspicious place can be tackled by choosing a good date. If a master doesn’t understand the technique of selecting a good date, then he/she would find himself/herself in predicament because frankly speaking, there aren’t too many good and auspicious places around in this world.

 

Since I have come into contact with Feng Shui, there were many, and still are many bizarre and unexplainable yet unfortunate cases continue to happen such as the case of recently missing plane. For example one experiences financial losses, ill health, injuries, affairs just to name a few. Apparently these incidents have irritated those new house owners who were supposed to enjoy their new properties.

 

It is indeed quite challenging at times to find out what actually happened to the properties as most of the premises though wouldn’t make the dwellers super rich; the place aren’t that bad either. Upon further investigation, it normally transpired that the move in date was inauspicious: it is either the date and time are conflicting or someone has disturbed ‘sha’ (犯煞).

 

While majority of good people out there choose inauspicious dates by chance; there are others who purposely choose inauspicious dates just to get rich such as that of the stories of “fighting with sha” (斗煞) and HK CTV posted earlier.

 

There is a Chinese saying about these types of practices:

 

“要速发，斗三煞；要发贵，修太岁。”

(Anyone who want to become rich fast, then fight san-sha; whoever want to be aristocrats, renovate direction of tai-sui)

 

Many secular masters thus encourage unwary folks to renovate where the ‘sha’ and yearly animal are. I have seen many cases that places of supposedly good Feng Shui didn’t bring good luck as anticipated but troubles to the owners. The reason is the effect of time and space are the fastest amongst all elemental forces.

 

This is clearly stated in “Doubting Dragon Sutra” <疑龙经>：

 

"大凡修造与葬埋，需将年月星辰排，地吉凶葬祸先发，名曰弃尸福不来。"

 

(Anyone who wanted to do renovation or burial, he/she must perform star chart calculation first. Even though the places are auspicious; troubles come first. This is called “discarding corpses without due luck”.)

 

Basically, one must not choose a ‘san-sha’ year, month, date and time whenever possible unless the time are pretty auspicious. Other than that the ‘earth-sha’ (土煞) and tai-sui (太岁) would best be avoided too though there are many ways to go about to mitigate the ill effects caused by these ‘sha’.

 

Liu-powen Fight San-sha’ (劉伯溫斗三煞)

Now, let me tell you a story of ‘fight san-sha” as I know many friends will like to hear this very interesting yet old folklore. I have provided the story in Chinese as well as I felt some difficulties in the actual translation:

 

The Ming emperor Zhu-yuanzhang wanted to refurbish the royal palace main hall so he ordered Liu-bowen to select an auspicious date. After some calculations, Liu has finally selected a date and time to perform the renovation work. However, the royal astrologer objected the date and time as those were extremely inauspicious timings. But Liu-bowen told Zhu-yuanzhang: "It will be OK provided that your majesty order Li-shanzhang and Chang-yuchun to supervise the work."

 

朱元璋登帝后，要装修大殿，令刘伯温择日。他于是进表呈上日子和时辰但当时的欽天监认为那是三煞大凶日和时所以反对。但刘伯温对朱元璋说：“只要动工时令李善长和长遇春监工即可。”
 

The emperor Zhu-yuanzhang decided to follow Liu-bowen’s plan.

 

朱元璋于是依刘伯温的计划去做。

 

On the commencement of the work, as it was anticipated thick clouds congregated with lightings and thunders causing workers to panic and wanted to stop working.

 

动工时果然乌云密布，加雷闪电，工人大惊准备停工。

 

At this time Li-shanzhang and Chang-yuchun entered the main hall as planned. The clouds dispersed while lightings and thunders immediately ceased; seemed that the weather has immediately turned sunny again.

 

这时李善长和长遇春依时上殿。他们一上殿，乌云立刻消散，雷电停止，天气马上变得晴朗。

 

Later, the royal astrologer asked Liu-bowen and he answered: “Since the green dragon and white tiger both entered together, why should I fear of san-sha?”

 

后来欽天监请教于刘伯温，伯温答道: “青龙百虎一起登殿，那怕三煞？”

 

This is the folklore of “going against san-sha”.

 

这就是世传“斗三煞“的故事来由。

 

The Story Of HK Commercial Television (佳藝電視臺)

As I am reading the bizarre news of missing flight MH370, I remembered a story concerning HK CTV now ceased operation. The Commercial Television (CTV) was the third free Hong Kong commercial TV which started business on November 7, 1975 but closed on August 22, 1978. There is a rumor going about the proposed date selected for the opening ceremony.

 

The below story is as I heard from an old astrologer friend:

 

It was said that in 1975 (乙卯), the CTV management has selected a san-sha (三煞) month and time for the TV station’s opening ceremony. According from an insider story that the purpose of selecting such an inauspicious timing was because the broadcasting industry in HK was like a war zone, since there were three TV companies at that time; the management decided to ‘fight san-sha’ (斗三煞). It seems like that the idea was taken from ‘the story of Liu-powen fight san-sha’ (劉伯溫斗三煞).

 

The opening ceremony was set at 4pm but rain started to pour down heavily few hours earlier and the situation worsened during the HK governor’s speech at that time. The rain continued through the night. That was the first indication of very bad omen to CTV.

 

My pal has guessed that the CTV management at that time wanted to mimic the san-sha fighting story so they invited the governor and many VIPs to attend the opening ceremony in the hope that these VIPs can overcome the san-sha.

 

However, things went quite unexpected as the governor didn’t attend the ceremony and added to the extremely bad weather; the VIPs were also absent! Frankly speaking, there weren’t anyone to fight the ‘sha’ so to speak.

 

In addition to the already bad omen was that one of the program broadcasted was “the story of the three kingdoms” (三國志). In the story of the three kingdoms, the kingdom of Shu (蜀國) where the main heroes were from was destroyed first; more significantly the story was handpicked by the general manager himself.

 

Therefore, astrologers were being advised not to ‘fight san-sha’ unless one is super confident. There are just too many bad examples around and one pretty recently too! Personally I think the ‘the story of Liu-powen fight san-sha’ (劉伯溫斗三煞) is just a folklore and cannot be trusted.

 

A Case In Date Selection: Where Is It? (日課)

 

 

Date selection technique is generally practised to find an auspicious date.

 

 

I was asked this question: Where could it be?

 

Let’s refer to a case in date selection and try to do some detective work ourselves:

 

First, just a disclaimer: this is only a study and does not refer to any real case.

 

According to previous I Ching prediction, the ‘thing’ is spread from the northeast of a mountain to southwest side of that mountain on a piece of land along the path. It is possibly on the northeast coastal area.

 

Now we will look into the date of the incident itself as listed above:

 

Basically, the time is not an auspicious timing. First of all, the hour of water enhanced the ill effects of ‘shan-sha’ (三煞) which is also of water element. Then the month and hour of the lower parts are in conflict (子卯刑 ) which means that it will not move far and that someone has done inappropriate actions; while the upper parts fuse water and fire into the wood element (丁壬合木). This is the fusion of ‘lust’ in astrological terms.

 

The year part fell into ‘emptiness’ (空亡) refers this may be a case of ‘air related incident’.

 

The day and hour fall onto ‘death and lifeless’. I am not going to elaborate more as it is quite apparent from the table above.

 

Let’s go back to answer the question of: where is it?

 

The answer is pretty obvious: it fell as fire into water at first and then being covered amongst trees, hills and water. Hence, my guess is that it is hiding in some northeast part of coastal area and the southeast part of that place.

 

Whatever situation is, only the time will reveal the truth. We can only pray at this time for everyone involved. Again, let’s not speculate but to wait patiently.

 

What Happened On That Day?

 

 

Disclaimer: This posting does not refer to any real situations. The discussion is only meant to show how to use I Ching for performing predictions.

 

A friend of mine went missing while travelling far north for a holiday trip a week ago and his family members have not heard from him since so they asked me to check him out. I have no remote viewing ability so I used I Ching instead.

 

In 2014, the year Shan-sha (三煞) are located at north and belong to water element. Since my pal travelled at midnight, it was the hour of rat (子時: 2300hrs – 0059hrs). The rat is also belongs to water element hence added to the force of Shan-sha. Now I am a little worry about the well being of my pal.

 

Let’s try to look at I Ching reading in mind:

 

The ‘host’ refers to my pal while the ‘opponent’ refers to the person he was to visit.

 

If looks like that my pal has not yet met his friend as he has changed his destination due to the seduction of a lady. Now we can only wait for the news with much patience and he would probably involve with lawsuits in due time.

 

So what is my pal’s future direction?

 

I would say his condition is not good as nothing furthers on his side.

 

Now, let’s look at what my pal has experienced so far:

 

He started from east moving forward in the air towards northeast direction. Suddenly there was a thunder in the sky and he hit a mountain and falls to the ground on southwest.

 

I hope I have better news for my pal’s family; but let’s pray for a miracle.

 

Predicting Illness In TCM (中醫算病)

Fates of a person can be predicted with various astrology systems; likewise the fates of nations. For example, 2014 is the year of metal horse and 2015 is the year of metal ram. As general rule, year of metal elements are pretty harsh in terms of safety of nations, share market etc. Added to that 2008-2019 is the period ruled by wood element. We all know that the metal besiege wood; hence during this year and next, many accidents that will cause injuries or death around the world.

 

You will scorned at me if I say that from the day you are born, your illnesses are already predefined; just like your fate is sealed when you first open your eyes to see this world. Well, in modern medicine, the condition of our body is determined by genes from our parents and our behaviors. However, in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the conditions of our physical body are also determined by the climate of the place and time when one is born.

 

Simply speaking, when one is born in summer, then his/her body will tend to be hot based; and when one is born in winter time, his/her body will be cold based. Let’s take another example:

 

This year, 2014 (甲午) is ruled by earth element and it is an excessive year and according to “Nei Jing” <黃帝內經>:

 

“The first half of the year will tend to bias to hot while the second part of the year would be dry.”

 

Following that, people born in year of ‘earth’ such as 1959, 1964, 1969 etc. will have below characteristics:

 

“The person’s body tends to be moist, he/she would have stomach bulging, loss of appetite, vomit, diarrhea, lethargic, poor digestive system and the person tends to be overweight …”

 

Only after identifying which type a person belongs to, proper treatment can be prescribed. Again referring to the above example:

 

"This person must pay particular attention to his/her diet such as he/she needs to consume more food that can reduce body moisture, reduce foods such like alcohol, fermented food or sweets.

 

In addition persons with hot and wet bases should meditate more and perform exercises such as yoga and Tai Chi boxing.

 

Things to watch day to day: He/she must avoid working or living under hot and damp environment while sleep early."

 

We can see that our traditional medicine systems are pretty holistic and all aspects are covered; this is very different from our modern medicine where the treatment is more objective: if a person suffers from headache, then the treatment is to treat headache alone. It is quite difficult to say openly which system is superior to the other because each system has its own strengths and weaknesses. All in all, it really depends on circumstances.

 

The Loose Cannon (擦槍走火)

Some of my friends are businessmen though I must confess that I can never become a businessman as I don’t like to entertain people. My cunning pals normally use tricks to seek my advices in solving their business issues and all of a sudden I found myself seated amongst a group of business people during supposedly a ‘private’ dinner.

 

There was a case when Yuan invited me to attend a dinner with another acquaintance, Charlie from Hong Kong. According to Yuan, Charlie was his business partner in Hong Kong. As narrated by Yuan, Charlie wasn’t doing too good in his business and had been seeking advices from a renowned Feng Shui master for help.

 

Apparently the master has charged a high price for all his consultations. At first, the master said Charlie’s name wasn’t good so he suggested a new name. After the name change, the master said he needs to ‘empower’ Charlie’s name with special rituals; hence another payment was requested. Later, the same master also suggested that Charlie’s house Feng Shui wasn’t good, so he found Charlie a new house somewhere in suburb area. For that service, the master has charged a high price again as he said that only him can choose the most auspicious date within this decade. Since Charlie was the most obedient person I have ever seen, he paid what the master wanted.

 

Well, things seemed to be stabilizing after the said changes; it only lasted for six months or so. After that, Charlie’s business continued to go down hills faster than the rollercoaster. Now Charlie wanted to have a joint venture with Yuan in the hope that this new venture will revive Charlie’s business. Needless to say, Charlie was Yuan’s best pal.

 

Now it transpired that my reason of sitting between Yuan and Charlie over dinner was to advise them if they should continue with the joint venture. Frankly, I was a little nosy to find out the truth behind Charlie’s ordeal or you won’t have this posting to read about…

 

So I told Charlie to give me the facing direction of his house; to my surprise as if Charlie has anticipated my demand, he pulled a stack of Feng Shui report and handed to me promptly.  I flipped over the report and only to find Charlie’s house was riding on “between lines” (騎線).

 

According to Flying Star Endowed <飛星賦>:

 

“豈無騎線游魂，鬼神入室。”

“Sitting between lines is as if wandering spirits entering a house.”

 

Apparently these between lines houses are as if loose cannons; they swing as they like and they may erupt quite unprecedented.

 

Having that in mind, I made an excuse to talk to Yuan alone about my concerns and asked him to be careful when working with Charlie. True enough, a year later; Charlie was in great debt and now in hiding and could not be contacted. Since Yuan was warned before hand, he only lost a small amount of money.

 

More on between lines:

 

http://liewsp1-magicsea.blogspot.com/2010/09/must-avoid-between-gap-lines.html