Feng Shui

Feng Shui (literally “wind and water”) is the Chinese teaching, over 2,500 years old, of consciously shaping the living space – in such a way that favourable energy is strengthened and burdening energy lessened. At the Kyborg Institute we take Feng Shui seriously, but hold a clear, personal and worldview-based attitude: instead of adopting foreign dogmas, it is worth developing an independent, European Feng Shui.

What is Feng Shui – and why are the schools at odds?

Even within traditional Feng Shui there is no consensus: many rules are disputed between the masters, some things openly contradict one another. For us this is no flaw, but a hint – namely that it is a matter of grown experience, not of exact science. All other cultures too knew a conscious shaping of their buildings and sanctuaries; in Europe the Germanic and Celtic equivalents were largely lost with Christianisation, while Christian master builders later created orders of their own (one thinks of Versailles or Sanssouci).

Feng Shui and Vastu Shastra – two independent ways

Feng Shui is a Chinese teaching: its imagery – Yin and Yang, the Five Phases of Change, “dragon veins” and mountain forms, alignment with the Pole Star, and later the Luopan compass – is deeply rooted in Chinese cosmology.

India, too, has a very old teaching of harmonious building and dwelling: the Vastu Shastra from the environment of the Veda, with the Vastu-Purusha-Mandala and a stronger orientation toward sun and moon. Both traditions deal with the same basic question – how to shape spaces in harmony with the forces of nature – but from our point of view they are two independent, related parallel developments, not one derived from the other. A direct descent of one system from the other is not historically documented.

More interesting to us than the question of origin are the different emphases: Chinese Feng Shui is strongly pragmatic-mental in orientation and aims noticeably at effect and success in outer life. The Indian Vastu Shastra emphasises more inner perfection and a spiritual-ethical framework. For us, both are equally valid approaches, only weighted differently – whoever considers both side by side gains the richer picture, without declaring one a mere offshoot of the other.

Whoever wants to understand Feng Shui therefore looks better at its Indian root than at holding the Chinese end-product to be the original.

How do we actually work with Feng Shui?

We apply it. As early as 1996, in “Energiepyramiden verändern die Welt”, D. Harald Alke described how the Bagua – the eight-sided mandala of energy distribution, the Yin-Yang symbol surrounded by the eight signs of the I Ching – fits together with the Horus Energy Pyramid: both are aligned with a compass, and because the pyramid corresponds exactly to the Bagua through its eight corners, one can be laid beneath the other (in detail in the standpoint Energy Pyramids and Feng Shui).

Much of traditional Feng Shui is bound to 2,500 years of Chinese life – a different morality, a different pragmatism, a different taste. Transferring it one to one easily produces solutions that feel foreign here. That is no shortcoming of the teaching, but the ordinary business of translating between cultures: you take up the principle and find your own form for it.

Which practical rules work everywhere?

Some recommendations are sensible across cultures, simply because they have to do with well-being and common sense:

• To have something beautiful in view – for instance the view into a garden – and at the same time to be able to see the entrance (one feels safe).
• To provide for good ventilation; to close off kitchen smells and the bathroom spatially.
• To bring life into the room with plants and water – symbols of vitality and abundance, in which psychology and Feng Shui meet.

Such rules one may confidently apply. The decisive thing is to proceed with patience and a fine feeling rather than with rigid tables.

The tradition of the masters – and one’s own judgement

Traditional Feng Shui is largely passed on as a school teaching, bound to families and masters. The reasons behind a recommendation are not always disclosed – as in many old traditions of craft and knowledge, in Europe no differently than in China.

Our position on this is not a criticism of the teaching but a rule directed at ourselves: what we apply, we should understand. Anyone who furnishes a room by a foreign table without sensing what the room does to them has gained nothing – whatever tradition the table comes from. More reliable than any school affiliation is personal sensitivity and the willingness to train one’s own judgement.

The same applies to us: our own recommendations are to be examined in the same way.

Our way: a European Feng Shui

Instead of copying foreign dogmas, we argue for schooling one’s own perception. For:

“It is not we who are a product of the environment, but our environment is a product of our thoughts and feelings! We shape this world according to our consciousness!”

And because perception is practice, the following holds for us:

“Every kind of intellectual study removes us from our own intuition rather than bringing it closer to us.”

The aim is that everyone informs themselves well, trains their sensitive perception and then shapes their own ground or their own home according to their own inner needs – freely and without master-dependence.

How does one school one’s own perception?

Helpful ways are, in our experience, pranayama (conscious breathing), meditation and Energytraining (see methods); for the harmonisation of the space a Horus energy pyramid can contribute. This is a spiritual suggestion, no promise of healing. Related background knowledge is offered by the lexicon under energy, chakra and esotericism.

Note: This article renders a personal, worldview-based view and is not medical advice.

By D. Harald Alke