[...]... reality They also have the potential to inspire our species’ more troublesome instincts to conform to specific customs Studies indicate that our instinctive urges can be guided merely by the presence and arrangement of nonhuman beings, landscape, and architecture 8 Architect’s Guide to Feng Shui To the ancients, subtly persuading humans to be their best meant creating habitations in harmony with nature The. .. Zhou li The site and date for groundbreaking had to be confirmed by heaven in advance In the Book of Odes one Neolithic ruler consults tortoise shells to obtain information whether a particular area offers the appropriate place and time for construction 10 Architect’s Guide to Feng Shui Humans mimic the macrocosm and the microcosm by conducting themselves so that they maintain harmony between the cosmos... 14 Architect’s Guide to Feng Shui A final note This book is not designed as self-help for the study of feng shui You can locate the worthwhile self-help books in Chapter 15, but none can provide instruction on all aspects of authentic feng shui and none can compare to study with a competent instructor What this book hopes to provide is factual information on aspects of authentic feng shui practise,... practices If feng shui is going to work in the modern world it has to meet the world’s criteria Let us see if it can Notes Introduction: global perspective 15 Chapter 2 Expert rules 18 Architect’s Guide to Feng Shui a) If a man climbs a mountain, the oxen below look like sheep and the sheep like hedgehogs Yet their real shape is different It is a question of the observer’s viewpoint T From the Lushi chunqiu... traditional feng shui into the modern practise of architecture It hopes to offer a perspective on scientific principles that seem to underpin certain aspects of the traditional practice You definitely will not find much ‘new age’ thinking in these pages because that mindset has nothing to do with feng shui Traditional feng shui is part of Chinese traditional science (ethnoscience) and follows a long history... chunqiu he theories of yin and yang and the five elements (wuxing) form the philosophical basis of traditional Chinese science Professor Liu Yanchi (1998) suggests the best way for a Westerner to appreciate these theories may be to think of them in terms of concepts like systems theory (which blends the study of quantities with the study of form or pattern) and complexity theory (which tries to explain... welcome her effort to dismiss superstition disguised as Feng Shui I am sure architects will find traditional Feng- Shui practices reasonable after reading this book We can expect more and more architects will be interested in designing houses in accordance with Feng Shui principles Joseph Yu Chapter 1 Introduction: global perspective 4 Architect’s Guide to Feng Shui Macrocosm to microcosm The jewel that... indicates the Tropic of Cancer) The Talmud says that if a town is to be laid out in a square (which identifies what is made by humans), its sides must correspond to the cardinal directions and align with Ursa Major and Scorpio (Eruvim 56a) The practices of al-qibla, built into the Ka’aba and all mosques, orient east and west sides to sunrise at the summer solstice and sunset at the winter solstice The south... (Unfortunately, the Greeks did not know about chemical elements; they also did not know that 22 Architect’s Guide to Feng Shui Expert rules 23 atoms do not exhibit the geometrical structures they assigned to them.) Wuxing does not express this thinking at all The term actually identifies processes, qualities, and phases of cycles, inherent capabilities, or changing phenomena At its most basic, according to Professor... a form of respect, and human cultures provide mythic justification for these acts Buildings everywhere used to be imbued 6 Architect’s Guide to Feng Shui with magic, carefull oriented to the heavens and nearby spiritual features of the land, and integrated with the world at large Planetary rotation helped us define cardinal directions which, along with the centre, ‘here’, assumed importance for humans . alt="" ARCHITECT’S GUIDE TO Feng Shui EXPLODING THE MYTH This Page Intentionally Left Blank ARCHITECT’S GUIDE TO Feng Shui EXPLODING THE MYTH BY CATE BRAMBLE AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW. learning Feng Shui, she was brave enough to declare war on what was not. She continues to make an effort to fulfill her mission and her website grows to become Feng Shui Ultimate Resource’ today. A. before scientists can explain why and how Feng Shui works, it should be our target. Therefore, the way to study Feng Shui and other ancient metaphysics is to use a logical system. I am glad that Cate