Down through the Ages
The Origins of Feng Shui
As Science and Art
by Chynna Dahl
Feng shui is an art as much as a science, a philosophy and view of life as much as a practical guide to create harmony and thus better manage that life. In true Oriental style, feng shui itself is simultaneously complex, mysterious, and beautiful, hard to classify and define, yet sublimely attractive. It is undeniably practical and efficient, but also mystical, full of symbolism and poetry. Here what is useful and what is graceful combine into a beautiful presentation of ideas. Let's face it, feng shui is addictive to anyone who appreciates these elements and who aims to use their own skills and knowledge to fashion a better state of being all around them.
The origins of feng shui reach back over three thousand years to early practitioners who were a combination of scientific observers and mystical translators of what they saw and felt. They were thinkers and diviners, analysts and mystics. They detected and defined this elusive life force we today know as Chi (or qui), studied it, learned to recognize and decipher its quality and messages, watched and felt how it responded to various changes, noted where it flourished and where it became sluggish and toxic.
Then, being human, they began trying to manipulate, alter, encourage, channel, and cultivate it. They made it a resource and formed an alliance, a working partnership between the existence of Chi and the knowledge they were steadily accumulating about it. They learned where Chi existed naturally and was beneficial, harmonious, and nourishing to the inhabitants, structures and other elements. They studied why the Chi in some places was so uplifting and why in other places it was hazardous and awful. They listed commonalities in these various spots and then worked to see if creating conditions where Chi could thrive increased its power and profit ... and whether they could "cure" the problems where Chi was stale and unproductive -- or worse.
It took both their interpreter's eye and their mystic's heart to reveal the secrets of what they were examining, but gradually a body of wisdom emerged, full of suggestions, precepts, principles, and ideas we can use and profit from today. It started, of course, with the ability to understand (and eventually speak) the language of the land, listening to the voice of the mountain stream, feeling the message in the mountains themselves, immersing themselves in the sensations that came in the fields, plains, and valleys, talking to rocks -- perhaps literally, and conversing with the currents of air.
They learned to speak a language without sounds, but which undeniably contained information and directions as to how people could use the environment that surrounded them to profit more consciously -- or not. Their legacy lives on in the concepts they developed, the principles and laws they defined, and the eternal curiosity that invites us to discover what they discovered, admire what they achieved, and use it ourselves these many eons later. We can implement their suggestions, conduct our own studies, make our own changes ... to live better, be healthier, be happier and more prosperous ... or not. That, too, is a beautiful facet of feng shui. Your choices are yours. And so is the responsibility for what follows.

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