The Chinese geomancy

(Krystyna Grażyna Czajka-Bartosik)

The Chinese geomancy (FengShui) attend with the choice of beneficial places for the human life, however with the equal care it saw about and does this also today with the choice of profitable places on the burial. Hereof that not every place is fitted for building, it is known since a long time, but today it seems that one forgot a little hereof. This powerful Chinese art is in fact a very complicated system and from at least several thousands of years exerts the strong influence in China, Japan, Korea. This art ruled on the choice of the city location, whether the capital location. The Capitals, whether emperor's palaces were always located in absolutely most profitable places. It is also necessary to be awake to this, that in former China the FengShui Art was not generally available. The knowledge hereupon and the possibility of taking advantage of its benefits were reserved for the Emperor's only and for his family. It could not escape outside the emperor's palace, because this threatened with the death not only of the guilty person, but also with the execution of the all family of defaulter.

At least a fundamental suppose of the geomancy is the statement that exist more or less profitable locations for the settlement themselves the human. The place of the human life can accordingly bear on the human being who uses the space. Not from today it is still known that everything, what surrounds us has the great influence on our life. When we live in the beautiful, harmonious environment we feel more safely, more better, more happily
than in the ugly and neglected environment. The Chinese name of the geomancy (feng shui), literally means "the wind and the water". The rules those the geomancy manages at the choice of profitable places are greatly complicated, and they are connected with an analysis of landscape forms surrounding the place of settling, with a geographical orientation, water etc. Because the Nature can bear on the man impromptu profitable, or not. One believed that if the man will choose the good place and will use it impromptu worthy - he enjoyed with the prosperity.

The place of the house building must be accordingly in so-called "geomantic harmony". Just there under with the condition the man can figure on the flow of the life-giving feed energy to his life. If that harmony will become cut by the man, the life-giving energy cannot flow. But what is more, it can begin injure. When the location becomes unprofitable, one can expect all manner of failures with diseases inclusive. Because also in the past people cared very much for the maintenance of the harmony, because they knew that consequently it will bring to them a long and favourable life. However even in situations, when from different consideration the man decided on the destruction of the harmony, after working of the building he cared for its re-establishing.

In other words "the beneficialness" of the nature can be devastated but also restored through the human action.

Such understanding of the geomancy caused that the management resources of the environment was in the past out and away more thoughtful than goes on this today. Besides the houses were put into a environment composition trying not to cause too heavy changes in kind. Today it is often inversely. Constructing important undertakings one changes the nature for needs of the man. Changes completely its appearance.

The Chinese paradigm and feng shui:
1. All that exists has Qi (about understood as the energy).
2. All that has Qi, is jin or jang (two opposing natures, e.g. female and man's).
3. The Nature is mysterious, magic, personified, and susceptible on damages.

Master Kuo Pu

Feng Shui - the geomancy - consists of two words: "feng" what means "the wind" and "shui" - "the water". In the Chinese culture the gentle breeze, smooth water were always associated with a prosperity, a good harvest and a health, while as the high wind, the dead water always marked the hunger and of the disease. Because good feng shui always marked the good luck, the good fate, the fortune. Bad feng shui marked bad lucks and of the disease. So FengShui is not a system of beliefs. It is an Art and a learning of the understanding of Power Nature. So to design and to arrange houses and of the workplace, in the maximum superlative to use natural energies of the place, instead of to fight with it. Everything for this in order to the man be able to feel happy and satisfied. So FengShui helps to us to control the flow of the beneficial energy (Sheng chi) to be able to live and to work in the harmony, at the same time avoiding bad (sha) places having the many a time destructive influence on our life and on us ourselves.

In accordance with the lexical definition the term "the geomancy" means the kind of the fortune-telling. However, when we will look into the description of the time-limit "the geomancy" of made by Christopher Cattana in 1558 year, we will read:

The geomancy is called Gy, the Greek word. What Earth means, and the Mancy, this is the knowledge. Or, to give the proper description, is descended from Gyos and Magos, what means the recognition of earthly things by the power of higher bodies, four elements, seven planets and of twelve blue (the translation Mark Geisler) signs.

If we will look on - it is the cosmological definition. Exactly this definition was just used by XIX century Thinkers to shift the Chinese definition "feng shui" on term "the geomancy" which in this time appeared among currents of the thought of The West. Generally Sinologists always criticized the usage of comprehending "the geomancy" with reference to "feng Shui", because this second in the literal translation means "the wind and water".

Master Huang-shih kung and his student Chang Liang

The term of "geomancy" is in used to different forms of the fortune-telling, feng shui (the fixing of the Qi flowing in the world of the nature), in theories of lines which junctive different megalithic objects, ancient monuments, but it is used also in the domain of the seismography. Except above, the term the geomancy defines also the atmospherology, astroarcheology, the astrobiology, astropsychology, bioethics, etc.

In the internet encyclopedias we can find: THE GEOMANCY [gr.], the form of the fortune-telling whose an aim is finding most the berth on the construction of sacral objects, abodes of rulers, also private houses; the developed especially in China (feng shui). 

The geomancy is the knowledge about The Earth, the elements and about time cycles. It describes the structure and functions of The Earth with reference to the Human bodies. The geomancy is a science. Studying the Chinese Geomancy, we can notice that it admits The Earth as the living organism, and every human efforts are directed into the aspect of the design to the harmony. This just feng shui permits to use the geomancy as the practical helpful knowledge to the man into his earthly living.

Even if the materialistic science throw away the idea of The Earth as the living being, it stays a fact that to the present man is a lack "of something" in his total strongly urbanized world. So he does not feel himself as if he wished. The art of the living in the harmony with The Earth, deriving of maximum profit from that fact, and the being in the right place and at the right time is often called a name of "feng shui". I will use here the definition which was published in "The Living Earth Manual" in the 1982 by Stephen Skinner.

"The art of living in the harmony with The Earth and deriving the maximum profit, the calmness and the prosperity from the fact of the standing in the good place and in the good time is called feng shui".

It is not a problem that feng shui comes from The China. This is not a barrier, because of which, people of the westerly world would not be able to develop this knowledge within and to derive profit from the Chinese geomancy. The Chinese geomancy emphasizes on the geography of the place and the aim of the human.

In 1949 Rene Berthollet used the term "the astrobiology" to the qualification of the whole class of related concepts with the geomancy. For Rene Bartholletta the astrobiology (the geomancy) was the system of thinking based on connections among mathematically expressed the heavenly rule and with rhythms of the living on The Earth which are biologically determined. This description very well works in with Chinese feng shui. The rule The Heaven - The Earth - The Man, this is exactly this, on what is based the Chinese geomancy, The I Cing, The Heavenly Qi, The Earthly Qi and The Man Qi - this is the specific order, the natural hierarchy of the Universe. The Human’s Body vibrates with this order and it is its part.

Charles Henry (1859-1926) in his book from the 1924 year "Generalization of the Theory of the Radiant Energy", introduced his own spherical model, with a view of showing of the state of the dynamic balance. On this state consist the three resonance fields mutually themselves penetrating: electromagnetic, gravitational and biopsychic. This are the three main resonance fields through which we can define our experiencing of the reality.

Taking every bit of it under the attention together with the ancient geomantic equation:
The Heaven - The Earth - The Man, we find that:
- The Heaven is an analogue of the electromagnetic field - The Heavenly Qi, in other words the world of our senses and our experiences constituting our experiencing of the visible world.
- An analogue of the gravity field is The Earth - Qi of Earth, that is to say the principle of our experiencing up to the mark earthly-physical.
An analogue of the biopsychic field is the Man - Human Qi, the factor rooted from DNA, in other words it is the human organism, biological and the reflection spirit, thanks to which the man experiences and connects The Heaven and The Earth.

These three fields do not exist separately apart, but they are vibrating one another. The geomancy supposes the sainthood of the world wherein we live. The image of the sainthood manifestations in the simplicity of gardens, whether in the method of the landscaping. The geomancy also originated to these spheres in China and of Japan. This basic principle: "The Heaven - The Earth - The Human" lay down at grassroots even so simple on the face of the art of composing of flowers. Supposing we will attempt for the use of this rule with reference to our houses, environments, whether the whole civilization, it will gather the character of the cosmical harmony. The geomancy underlies every aspects of the harmony, and this is both in turn: an art and a learning. Half-hearted that the world of occurrences is saint in its own nature, there would be no geomancy.

As a model for unifying art and science and whole systems in general, in the context of our natural relationship to the earth and its environment, geomancy -- the primordial science of harmony and orientation -- presents itself as a prelude or foundation for a yet more refined and all-encompassing discipline: holonomics.

As a way of knowing, holonomic refers to the capacity for self-transcendent knowledge. To use the traditional geomantic terminology, this is the knowledge by which the subsystem man might come to know the more encompassing system heaven-and-earth. Thus, as a holistic knowing, holonomics depends upon a self-reflective consciousness, a clarity of perception, and an ability to account for and create order -- a process culminating in the intuitive apprehension and expression of the whole system of order of which one is a member.

Holonomics contains a thoroughly organismic theory of the earth as an living entity, with human society as a part of the "evolving giant creature." This understanding is contained in the geomantic equation heaven, earth, and man, as well as in the hermetic dictum, "as above so below," by which it is understood that the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm and vice versa. Any one familiar with the holographic paradigm will understand this, i.e., that inherent in the hoof of the horse, is not just the model for other hooves, but for the whole horse as well.

Being holistic, holonomy of necessity brings into play areas of knowledge hitherto known as paranormal, supernormal, or parapsychological -- i.e., the specifically nonrational realm of knowing -- which, like the science of geomancy itself, became highly discredited following the eighteenth century triumph of materialist science.
First used by George Leonard in "The Silent Pulse" (1978) as a term defining entities "in the nature of a hologram,". Holonomic is a conception defines of holistic knowing, i.e., knowing that is simultaneously intuitive and rational, scientific and artistic. Thus, holonomics describes the order of reality as well as the way we come to know and express that order. Derived from holo, "whole" and nomy " law or principle governing or pertaining to," holonomy refers to the law or principle governing whole systems, while holonomics describes the study or investigation of this law or principle. As a descriptive term, holonomy ultimately refers to the universe entire as a dynamic interwoven web transcending partial or analytic definition. If the universe is holonomic, the composite subsystems of the universe from atomic to galactic, are also holonomic. Each level or subsystem comprises a synthesis or holarchy ("whole order") that reflects the order of the total system-universe-expressible therefore by a single holonomic model or unit of information. By contemplating and understanding this holonomic model one may come to understand the whole, as well as the different subsystems, as facets of one mutually interacting, interpenetrating set of orders and operations.

F. Capra said: - Every one hypotheses agree as to one, that the holonomy - the whole Universe contained in every of it part - it is perhaps the universal propriety of the nature.

As we have seen, modern historians, in their attempts to understand and explain geomancy, have resorted to terms like astrobiology, mystical ecology, and astroecology. All of these terms have implicit in them some idea of a terrestrial psi field by which the human mind and the environment are connected and can actually operate in harmony. In the geomantic paradigm, of course, there is no question that the earth is a living entity of which man is an inseparable member. From this it follows that the reason there could be a system of astrobiology or mystical ecology is precisely because the organism, man, provides the grounding and means of expression for a unitary planet mind or consciousness -- Reiser's psi field.

The psi bank works probably as phenomenally simple and the all-embracing system of keeping and of the information retrieval (the hard disk), that is to say the holonomics brain (planetary). It works on the same principles which rule with the activity of all system in Universe.

Based on authority:
1. Howard Choy - seminar materials
2. Słownik Fizyki - Prószyński i S-ka 2000
3. The internet- encyclopaedia
4. Jose Arguelles: Earth Ascending (1984),
5. Fritjof Capra: The Tao of Physics
6. .Jose Arguilles: The Mayan Factor. Path Beyond Technology.
7. Zbigniew Królicki: Feng Shui niech przestrzeń pracuje dla ciebie
8. Stephen Skinner: Living Earth Manual z roku 1982
9. Charles Henry: Generalization of the Theory of Radiant Energy 1924
10. Georga Leonarda (The Silent Pulse - 1978)

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