Feng Shui

{a feng shui home (http://www.njrealtorjodi.com/2012/08/28/how-to-feng-shui-your-home/)}

Feng shui is the ancient Chinese Taoist philosophical system behind harmonizing humans with their surroundings. Feng shui teaches about the qi, or the energy, that binds the universe together into one. Feng shui was first used to focus sacred building towards water or the stars or a specific direction. While the practice of feng shui was suppressed during the 1960s cultural revolution in China, more recently, feng shui has gained popularity not only in China, but globally. In the simplest terms, good feng brings health and luck and bad feng brings misfortune.

Qi is the positive or negative energy of a location. Many factors can affect the qi such as the orientation of the building, how old the building is, the resemblance of the building to its surroundings, and the health of the actual land beneath the building. To discover the strength of the qi, one must use a lou-pan, a magnetic compass. While this updated version of this compass is now used to measure the amount of solar radiation in a given area, a loupan was initially believed to measure the amount of good karma evokes from a given area.

{an lou-pan specifically for feng shui as seen by the bagua inscription on the compass (http://fengshuiforlife.eu/udalosti/)}

The theory of yin and yang is relevant in feng shui. Yang exerts energy and yin receives that energy. The energy comes from the five elements: fire, metal, earth, water and wood. The goal of feng shui in terms of yin and yang is to align said building in the equilibrium of yin and yang. A bagua, or an feng shui energy map, is an octagonal grid marked by the eight I Ching symbols that help to determine the elements present. One superimpose this grid over a floor plan and the elements are revealed.

In the United States, when feng shui is considered, less focus revolves around the actual building and instead the interior design. All the elements are directed towards the entryway of a room rather than the solar radiation of the land. Further, the eight I Ching symbols represent particular areas of one's life rather than areas of nature's qi. This divergence in theory was brought to the United States in the 1970s by the creator of the Black Sect Tantric Buddhism Feng Shui lifestyle, Thomas Lin Yun. Today, this is the more popular Western interpretation of feng shui.

{http://fengshuilifeandstyle.com/what-is-bagua/}

{http://www.cubehills.com/kua-number-and-bagua-map/}

On the left is the traditional Chinese bagua used to orient a building around the qi based on the elements. The Western areas of one's life interpretations have been added alongside the corresponding elements and their traits. On the right is the Western interpretation of the bagua that applies to the inside of a room.

Colors and materials present in the room matter, and should try to correspond with the element present. Both bagua show the most important color of each quadrant.

While feng shui is an ancient science and how now been shown to be much more of a mental state than a remedy for misfortune, the fact that feng shui has been making a comeback 3000 years after its origin shows that something was be working.

References:

http://fengshui.about.com/od/thebasics/qt/fengshui.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui