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Feng Shui In The Landscape
Over
the last two years or so you may have read articles about Feng Shui
and you probably got the idea that it's something like a mystic
interior design strategy, but it is actually a lot deeper than that.
In fact it is one of the five branches of traditional Chinese
medicine. It is a very ancient knowledge, more than 5,000 years in
existence. Whilst
I believe that the spelling Feng Shui is universal, the
pronunciation varies, I would pronounce it 'Fung Shway', if I was
Chinese, or 'Fung Shui', if I was Japanese, or 'Fung Soy' in part of
It
is really a study of the effect that the environment has on us. The
two words Feng Shui literally mean 'wind' and 'water', but the
Chinese themselves have a very simple way of looking at it; as 'good
luck - bad luck' or 'good fortune
- bad fortune'.
Its basic tenet is that all life has energy permeating it and
that energy is called 'chi', and the quality of the chi is what
really gives us our health and wellbeing and it enables us to
progress in life and to link with the divine.
The chi is cosmic chi, and at times when we are very quiet,
we can be very much aware of that. For example if we go into a very
beautiful and quiet place we may become aware of chi. I
well remember one particular such experience, standing in Killarney,
looking out over the lakes and watching the ripples on the water -
that really, if you think about it, is the cosmic chi, or cosmic
breath, soft breezes playing in the environment, and in a way that
is what gives life to all living things and everything that grows,
both vegetable and animal. It
is the quality of the chi that is important and there are many ways
of ensuring that the chi is of high quality and can create health. Good
quality chi provides us with a healthy environment, and there are
certain aspects that will interfere with that quality. The
main energies that we talk about are wind energy, air energy and
water energy. Water
energy is extremely important because it is what energises the
earth, it's what feeds the plants and so it is very important for
any water in the landscape to be very clear, and that which makes it
unclear is stagnation, so the important thing is to keep water
flowing. I
am talking here about a domestic landscape, a site around a home,
but it could equally be a business area or business park If you have
a water feature do not allow it to stagnate, because that is what
causes negative energy and will ultimately bring our energy levels
down as humans and also that of the plants and animals around us.
If
you are involved in landscaping or if you are working on your own
garden, and you have a water feature there, it is important to keep
it moving fairly quickly, but the speed of the chi is all important,
if you let the water stagnate it does lead to disease and can
stagnate the whole area. It may be the case that there isn’t
adequate drainage around your home or the site you are working on.
It is a subtle matter because it causes people to feel depressed and
out of sorts and feel below par. With water features it is better to
have some living animals on or in the water if it is at all
possible, bird-life like ducks or fish or anything that keeps the
water agitated or moving at a fairly fast pace. However,
if the water goes too quickly, it actually takes away the nutrients
and the plant life does not actually benefit It is most important to
achieve the correct water speed.
If the water is too fast you must put in some sort of dam,
depending on how large the area is of course, just to slow down the
flow of the water. If
it's just a small area you can put in rocks or stones, and this is
what might be described as effecting a cure. In
Feng Shui the five elements used in traditional Chinese medicine are
the all important elements, and everything goes back to these five
elements namely: water,
wood, fire, earth and metal. Those
five elements work in that order, that is known as the productive
cycle. There is
naturally a destructive cycle as well and when I said to you to put
stones into the fast flowing water, the stone represents earth and
that is the element that will take the energy from the water. It
is important to realise that in any particular site where there are
humans, or where there might be a farm for example, the actual site
itself needs to be looked at. There
are particular dimensions that are considered to be
important. If you
have a house or farmland on a site it is considered very good to
have the length of the house behind twice the width in front. (e.g.
20ms long by 10ms wide) The
space around the building is also very important because that allows
the energy to flow in a very positive kind of way. When
I speak about chi being positive, in this way in the context of the
air around us, it is linked to the paths around our buildings. If
the paths in front of a house or school or other building are too
straight, it is considered to contribute to negative energy. It is
not good for a straight path to lead up to a house, the ideal is to
have meandering paths around the house or building, because the wind
also meanders around gently. The
other ideal circumstance is to have what we used to call good
shelter around a site. Ideally
if you are in a town or city you should have another tall building
behind the house to give it ‘support’. It is also good to have
hedges on either side, because when you are looking out from the
building you are in, it's better to have a lowish hedge or wall
particularly on the left hand side, as protection around the house,
this is what the Chinese call the ‘dragon's breath’.
Ideally
what you want to have around edges of the site is something like an
armchair configuration where you have height behind the building and
hedges or walls around the sides, not very high, but sufficient to
give protection and to circulate the energy or wind around the
house. With
regard to drainage, the ideal thing is to have it coming from the
back of the house to the side and coming to the front of the house
and disappearing out of sight. The fall should be from the back of
the site towards the front. All
of these aspects would contribute to the ideal kind of environment
in which to live and breathe, helping us to link with the spiritual,
to link with the other world. Feng
Shui also addresses the issue of direction, be it north, south, east
or west. It is suggested that there are particular directions for
particular people. But I
think it is best just to say that each of the directions are
important and each direction can be strengthened. The quality of
life in your environment can be greatly helped by putting plants or
items of particular elements in particular directions. For
example in the north of the site the water is the strong element and
it is good to have a water feature coming from the left to the front
of the house, - that
energises the whole area. Shrubs
are linked with the east and putting good quality hedging or shrubs
to the east of any site, does strengthen that area. If
you were putting in a metal feature, it should go in the west of
your site. If you wanted
to put a fire element like a sundial it could be put on the south of
the site. Colours
are also linked with all of these sites, and putting particular
colours in different compass directions would strengthen the whole
site. The
south represents summer and the colour red, so any red flowers, or
plants/shrubs with red leaves would energise the southern part of
the house. The east
represents green so anything green obviously would be suitable.
In the west, white is the dominant colour, so white flowers
at that side of the house are best and the north as I said
previously is the location for the water feature and also represents
the colour black. I
feel as if I have barely touched on this intriguing subject today,
but I will be happy to answer questions.
It is a vast area, and it is really hard to know where to
start. I have only been able to give you a very potted version of
the whole thing. Q & A
Session
Ferris Jay:
I know in Feng Shui when it deals with interiors that [as you
said] there is a
‘compass school’, especially the well known ‘compass school’
where for example the north represents water and career.
In Response:
First of all might I say that you are talking about interiors
and I was going to talk about the ‘form school’ which is mostly
to do with landscape, because the landscape feng shui is form school
only and that is to do with mountains, rivers and all of that. There
are in fact three schools in Feng Shui. Let
me explain a little about interior feng shui.
This thing of dividing the home into nine different areas and
starting at the door, to me is the equivalent of doing 'pop'
astrology and reading one of the twelve signs in the newspapers in
the morning. It is a
very generalised approach. What
I have found is that it is the compass feng shui that really works
- you take the
person's date of birth, you work out what their kwa number is and
from the kwa number you decide on what area to energise in the home,
career or wealth or whatever. It
is a completely different area to landscape feng shui, the Form
School is the only way to look at the environment you have around
you and how best to energise that and make the best of that,
according to what you see around you. The
whole thing is that if you don't have something to hide behind - for
instance, you can simulate a mountain. The
mountain is what you should have behind your home, so the thing is
to simulate a mountain feel by building a wall or letting tall trees
grow, and you are thus creating the mountain, creating that support
behind you. You can
simulate any of the qualities that you do not have.
Nobody has to worry about the environment, everything can be
improved and helped along if the particular spot that you are in is
not very powerful. One
of the things that you will find is that there are great energy
spots around the world and those energy spots are where the cosmic
chi is really cosmic and even more holy and powerful.
You can almost perform miracles by raising energies nearer to
this level, your own health energies.
It is a powerful tool and we should therefore be very
reverent with everything we come in contact with. All
of the things I have been saying to you about using different
colours and different elements can actually help to make your
environment really wholesome and energetic and help you to reach
your potential, reduce fatigue and get you going on your journey
unimpeded by obstacles. Francis Carr:
How does the use of colour by Feng Shui relate to the western
use of colour, colour theories in the west, for example the use of
colour for health and so on. Response:
They do appear to be different, because I was involved in
colour healing at an earlier stage of my life and the colours seem
to be different. The
thing about Feng Shui is that when you take the date of birth of a
person, if you are talking about personal Feng Shui, (going away
from the landscape for a moment).
You look at the day the person was born and every day and
every hour of the day has a certain resonance with the five elements
I talked about and with colour and if you as a person may be short
on colour, the thing to do is to increase the colour or augment your
spectrum of colours to create good health.
The colours that the Chinese use seem to have been different
from the colours that we use for healing.
All
I can tell you is that using the five element colours for each
person or location does seem to work and help people to create an
environment where they can become more healthy.¾ ‘Grant
me sweet Christ the grace to find – Son of the Living God!
- A small hut in a lonesome spot To make it my abode A little pool but very clear To stand beside the place Where all men’s sins are washed away By sanctifying grace. A pleasant woodland all about To shield it from the wind And make a home for singing birds Before it and behind. A southern aspect for the heat, A stream along its foot, A smooth green lawn with rich top soil Propitious to all fruit.’ From the poem ‘The Hermitage’, taken from the
book ‘Kings, Lords and Commons’ by Frank O’Connor.
The original poem was ascribed to St. Manchan of Lemanaghan
in Offaly.
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