There are several traditional schools of Fengshui. The oldest is
called the 'Form School'. In ancient China, people analysed their
surroundings to find favourable locations for founding villages, or
placing tombs. An ideal location would offer protection from the wind
and from hostile peoples. It would be cordoned off by a Black turtle
from the back: a mountain range or a tall structure. It would have a
Green Dragon and a White Tiger, hills sheltering the area from the
sides. The Red Phoenix then was a lower hill that provided protection
from the front. A river served to supply a steady stream of Qi.
Nowadays, a sound landscape analysis is still applied to improve the
Qi circulation of a home, or to adjust construction plans. Of course,
few people still live in a rural environment with mountains and
rivers, so today we mainly look for buildings, trees and roads to
analyse the Fengshui of an environment. There are all kinds of
adjustments which can improve the circulation of Qi inside, as well.
The "Compass School", as the name suggests, uses
compass directions and various Fengshui calculations to analyse the
living environment. By means of astrology, trigrams and hexagrams and
the five phases (water, fire, earth, wood, metal) to living
environment is harmonized.
The Fengshui Compass (Lo-Pan) is used to determine the position of the
eight trigrams (Bagua) in a living or working environment to gain
information about favourable and unfavourable Qi flow. Unfavourable
spaces can then be neutralized.
It is also possible that a specific space is favourable for a
particular activity (a room could be ideal for studying, but
unsuitable as a bedroom).
A Fengshui compass usually contains a great deal of information, but
is not strictly necessary for determining the position of the eight
trigrams.
“Nine Palaces, Flying Stars” FengShui is closely
related to the “Compass School”. It tracks the movement of the stars
through the nine palaces in order to analyse the flow of Qi of a
location. Every year, the stars shift between the palaces. Depending
on where the stars are located, we can analyse the placement of a
house and its effect on the inhabitants for that year. When the fifth
star is in the centre of the square, negative influences arise in the
house, which need to be neutralised in order to protect the occupants.
The movement of the stars is combined with the hexagrams of the
Yijing. The birth dates of the residents can be used to help identify
the relationship between them and the energy pattern of their
environment.
