Feng Shui Made Really Easy XI
San He School
Joseph Yu
September 1999
If the Eight House School is a result of "Playing with the Trigrams", then
the San He School is a result of "Playing with Stems and Branches". A lot
of people mistake the Eight House School as part of the San He School. This
is far from the truth.
The entire theory of the San He School is based on the four sets of
"Triangular Combinations". If we use the twelve animals to represent the
twelve branches, then we have
Rat = Zi
Ox = Chou
Tiger = Yin
Rabbit = Mao
Dragon = Chen
Snake = Si
Horse = Wu
Goat = Wei
Monkey = Xin
Rooster = You
Dog = Xu
Pig = Hai
The four sets of combinations are:
Monkey - Rat - Dragon = Water
Tiger - Horse - Dog = Fire
Pig - Rabbit - Goat = Wood
Snake - Rooster - Ox = Metal
The twelve branches also denote the twelve stages of life of the four
elements. The twelve stages are:
(1) Birth (Chang Sheng)
(2) Bathing (Mu Yu)
(3) Dressing up (Guan Dai)
(4) Adulthood (Lin Guan)
(5) Prime (Di Wang)
(6) Declining (Shuai)
(7) Sick (Bing)
(8) Dead (Si)
(9) Buried (Mu)
(10) Vanishing (Jue)
(11) Embryo (Tai)
(12) Development (Yang)
Measurements refer to the "Slit Needle" (Feng Jin) which reads 7.5 degrees behind the "Proper Needle" (Zheng Jin). This needle was originally used in "Feng Shui for Graves" as the guideline to locate "water".
Adding the 8 Heavenly Stems and the 4 corner Trigrams we get the 24 mountains. There are 6 Water Houses, 6 Fire Houses, 6 Wood Houses and 6 Metal Houses. Two adjacent mountains are combined to form a "double mountain" and the twelve stages are assigned to each double mountain. All placement of door, stove, master bedroom, the bed, etc... must be chosen from the good stages. However, there are two sub-branches of the San He School. One branch uses the sitting to define the house. The
other branch uses the facing to define the house. The results will be exactly opposite.
Later on other more complicated theories were developed. This includes the
"Eight Devils Yellow Spring", the "Peach Blossom Water", "Post Horse Water", the Tai Sui and San Sha, and a lot of other things.
You can make it as complicated as you like and you can also make it as
simple as you like. Master Jiang Da Hong was very bitter against this
school of Feng Shui. Master Shen Zhu Reng in the Qing Dynasty learnt this
school for many years before he decided to study the Flying Stars. He
stated that it was his greatest regret in life to have wasted so much time
on this school which was proven useless.
Up to the present, there is no organized book written to introduce the
teaching of this school in a logical sequence. The reason is simply because
such sequence does not exist.
Joseph Yu
September 1, 1999
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