Feng Shui Made Really Easy X
Level 3: The Eight House School, Part 4
Master Joseph Yu
Copyright 1999
In order to understand the Eight House School one must understand the
Yi Jing. The rules for assigning the "Wandering Stars" and the
auspicious and inauspicious directions according to the Life Gua are
all calculated according to the "change" of a trigram.
Mathematically,given any trigram, there are exactly eight ways of
changing the lines (yao) to produce a new trigram. Some changes are
fortunate while others are not.
Legend states that the formula was invented by an honorable monk
called Yi Xing in the Tang Dynasty.
The common story that Yi Xing, by order of the Emperor, invented this
school of Feng Shui to interfere with the prosperity and interests of
neighboring countries. People even called what he wrote the
"Destroying the Barbarian Classic". The original work was lost. This
explains why there are so many different versions of this school's
teaching.
Historically, people used a funny term to describe how they studied
the Yi Jing. Instead of saying "studying Yi" they said they were
"playing with Yi". This was not meant to be disrespectful to the Yi
Jing. It simply conveyed the idea that studying the Yi Jing was fun.
It also conveyed the idea that there is no fixed rule to study the Yi
Jing. Everyone has his own interpretation. This is exactly the intent
of the word "change". It means that a change can be viewed from
different perspectives and the result has different implications to
different people. Of course, the word "play" can also mean "admire" or
"appreciate".
There is then no definite answer to the question, "Which version of
the Eight House School is correct?" Some of the answers are:
[1] The Eight House School is the result of "playing with Yi".
Whichever can give a more reasonable interpretation is the true
school.
[2]Whichever "works" is the true school.
[3]It does not matter what is practiced. What does matter is who is
practicing. It means that the same technique, employed by different
Masters, has different results. It implies that there are fine tunings
only known to the true Master.
It appears that [2] is undisputable, but It is not. There is no proof
that feng shui "works". It is only a claim that it "works". There is
no proof that anything that happens after feng shui application is the
result of feng shui effectiveness. We can only claim and believe that
it is effective. No one can prove or disprove that feng shui works.
This leaves very little validity for the statement that "What works is
true feng shui".
Provided one has skill in claiming and skill in convincing people,
then they can appear as a great Feng Shui Master, regardless of the
style of feng shui.
To make things simple, people tend to ignore the "why" and focus on
the "how". Simplicity often spells success. This is the reason why the
Eight House School is the most popular school in Asia. In North
America, it is less popular because the Black Sect School is even
simpler.
If a school wants to enjoy popularity it must be able to produce
"overnight" practitioners who can, in turn, produce more overnight
practitioners. The number of "practitioners" will then multiply
exponentially. Sadly, this is the reality.
To summarize, the Eight House School teaches:
[1]The sitting of a house defines the House Gua or Trigram.
[2]Eight Wandering Stars, four auspicious and four inauspicious, are
assigned to each of the eight sectors of a house.
[3]Each person has his own Life Gua which yields four auspicious and
four inauspicious directions.
[4]Houses and people are divided into the East (Four) Group and the
West (Four) Group.
[5]To obtain the maximum benefit, an East Group person must live in
an East Group House, a West Group person must live in a West Group
House.
[6]A person must face his auspicious directions when he sits. When a
person sleeps, his head must point to one of his auspicious
directions.
[7]The door must face an auspicious direction according to the Life
Gua of the master of the house.
[8]The stove must be located to press on an evil star. It must face
an auspicious direction.
[9]Toilets are to be placed to suppress an evil star.
[10]Good stars are to be supported with the right elements and evil
stars must be suppressed by the right elements.
All these can be set up rigidly and overnight practitioners can
definitely be produced. Those who can play with the Yi can invent more
complicated issues than these and claim to be "True Eight House
Masters".
Joseph Yu, ?1999, All Rights Reserved
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