"Feng Shui" literally means "wind and water" in Chinese. Amongst a various anglicised pronunciations of these are .

Overview

Traditional ("classical," "authentic") feng shui occurs as Chinese ethnoscience that addresses the project & layout of cities, villages, dwellings, & buildings. A construction of graves & grave besides includes feng shui, however a system for home differ from either victims applied to "yin houses" (houses of the dead). Feng shui was labeled geomancy by 19th-century Christian missionaries to China; however, geomancy & feng shui differ widely in their scope, aims, & means.

Traditional feng shui utilizes the specialised compass called the Luopan, & a comprehensive array of calculations involving mathematical iterations. It has foundation texts, core theories & methods, & an telling past according to archeological discoveries & a operate of archeoastronomers. A New Age versions — Black Hat Sect, Pyramid Feng Shui, Fuzion, Intuitive, etc. — don't part this history. These offset usually have "intuitive" methods by owning construct from either a 19th-century Spiritualist movement, and self-help techniques and affirmations, along sustaining modern interior project.

E.g., a Black Hat Sect version of feng shui, which began around 1960s Hong Kong (and incorporated as a U.s. church in 1986), explains feng shui as the art of arranging objects in a personal to obtain an optimal flow of qi. In traditional feng shui, the objects in a structure come of lesser significance than the siting of a building & its local environment, especially microclimates. It's believed by numbers of that souls applying Future Age methods search to profits from either naïve consumers by explaining Up to date Age versions when "classical" or even traditional" feng shui. Yet, according to recent fieldwork in rural China by Ole Bruun, qi flow is rarely a concern in traditional feng shui.

Traditional Feng Shui began as an interplay of construction and astronomy. Early Yangshao houses at Banpo (c. 4800 BCE) were oriented to catch the mid-afternoon sun at its warmest a few days after the winter solstice. (Some tribes in southern China still refer to this month as "Home-building Year.") Professor David Pankenier and his associates performed retrospective computation on the Chinese sky at the time of the Banpo dwellings to show that the asterism Yingshi (Lay out the Hall, in the Warring States period and early Han era) corresponded to the sun's location at this time.

The asterism Yingshi was known as Ding during the Zhou era. Ding was used to indicate the appropriate time and orientation for a capital city, according to the Shijing. All capital cities of China, including Beijing, follow this design. The rules for capital cities and other habitations can be found in the Zhou-era Kaogong ji (Manual of Crafts). Rules for builders were codified in the Lu ban jing (Carpenter's Manual).

A grave at Puyang (4000 BCE) that contains mosaics of the Dragon and Tiger constellations and Beidou (Big Dipper) is similarly oriented along a north-south axis, and it includes the classical "heaven-spherical, globe-square" design applied to other buildings in China at varying periods, and was used in the design of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

At Taosi the traditional home of King Yao, an observatory (c. 2400 BCE) with 12 sighting windows may have been used as mentioned in Yaodian (in the Shijing) and Wudibenji (in the Shiji), as Yao assigned astronomers to observe sunrise, sunset, and evening stars in culmination. According to astronomers, Yao's pronouncement of the four major constellations is consistent with the astronomy for the age of the observatory.

The tombs of Shang kings and their consorts at the cemetery of Xiaotun near Anyang lie on a north-south axis, ten degrees east of due north. The Xia and Shang palaces at Erlitou are also on a north-south axis, slightly west of true north. These orientations were obtained by astronomy, perhaps using liuren astrolabes; the magnetic compass or zhinan zhen was not invented until the early Han era.

The history of feng shui devices may have begun at Lingjiatan c. 3000 BCE. An excavated grave contained a jade plaque with a compass design. (Similar markings were also found on pottery from the Taihu region.) The “arrows” point to cardinal and intercardinal directions. Noted historian Li Xueqin and other researchers indicate this is an early version of a liuren astrolabe, the ancestor of the more well-known feng shui devices shi, shipan, and Luopan.

Other feng shui devices consist of two-sided boards with astronomical sightlines. Liuren astrolabes have been unearthed intact from Qin-era tombs at Wangjiatai and Zhoujiatai. These devices date between 278 BC and 209 BC.

Today feng shui practitioners can select from three types of Luopan: San He (the so-called "form school", although the compass name means "Triple Combination"), San Yuan (the so-called "compass school", although the compass name actually refers to time), and the Zong He that combines the other two.

Feng Shui in More Recent Times

During the early 1800s feng shui was introduced to the US with the first Chinese immigrants. The notorious Four Corners section of New York, which was then a Chinese ghetto, featured gambling houses and other structures that incorporated feng shui, as did the Chinatowns in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 19th-century Australia, the Joss House was built using feng shui. It has also been practiced by western "hongs" or trading companies to satisfy local business communities and to encourage luck in business.

Since the mid-20th century, feng shui has been illegal in the PRC, primarily because Mao Zedong (who had studied feng shui) denounced many practitioners' propensity for fraud. Other reasons have been suggested, which is why a department of the Chinese government was assigned to oversee its use. Ole Bruun's fieldwork has shown that during the Cultural Revolution, most feng shui practitioners had their books burnt, were persecuted and jailed, and underwent extreme privations for their knowledge of ancient Chinese culture. Very few were willing or had the means to leave the country.

Feng shui is still used in rural China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It is not well-known among younger Chinese in the People's Republic of China (PRC). However, rapid modernization of China has led to feng shui becoming a worthy subject for scholarly inquiry at Chinese universities. As Chinese scholars increasingly work with their counterparts in the rest of the world, a new picture is emerging of the history and application of this ancient science.

Postmodernism

The famous Bank of China Tower on Hong Kong Island, a blade-like design by I.M. Pei (not a feng shui adept), was supposedly a deliberate curse upon the Government House and the former British administration. No updated version of this fable exists to explain effects on the current occupants.

Architects and landscape designers around the world are increasingly asked to include feng shui principles in their designs, even in places that do not include significant Asian populations. Regardless of the country of practice, businesses generally use feng shui to increase sales and boost morale. Homeowners may apply it as interior decorating or during the design and construction of a home.

The interest in feng shui principles has apparently accelerated in recent years with young designers' increased knowledge of microclimates, green building techniques, the threat of global warming, E.O. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis, and as a design reaction to the "inhuman" spaces of Modernism.

Miscellaneous
In the Hong Kong edition of Monopoly the boardgame, "Chance" is also known as "Feng Shui".

Other usuages
Feng Shui is also the name of a famous role-playing game inspired by Hong Kong action movies, initially published by Daedalus Publishing, now available from Atlas Games. See Feng Shui (role-playing game).

Feng Shui was also a 2004 horror movie in the Philippines starring Kris Aquino about an old bagua mirror that showers luck and prosperity to its owner (Kris Aquino) and brings death to those near her.