Classical feng shui, explained from the ground up

Before the shop-window version — the coins, the mirrors, the lucky frogs — feng shui was a siting art. This site is about that older thing.

Feng shui means wind and water. The older name, kan yu, is sometimes translated as “the way of heaven and earth.” Both names point at the same job: choosing and arranging a place to live or be buried so that it sits well in its landscape.

The classical texts care about practical things first. A good site is sheltered from wind, close to water, open to the sun, and protected at its back. The tradition wraps those observations in its own vocabulary — the sheltering hills become the Black Turtle at the back and the Green Dragon and White Tiger at the sides, the open outlook becomes the Red Bird in front — but underneath the animal names is a checklist a builder could still use.

Qi, yin and yang

The organising idea is qi — the flow of energy, weather, water and life through a landscape. Feng shui tries to gather sheng qi, the living kind, and avoid sha qi, the harsh kind: a howling wind corridor, a straight road aimed at the front door, stagnant water. Yin and yang describe the balance a site needs — shade and sun, stillness and movement, solid and open.

Whether qi exists as a physical thing is the wrong question to start with. Treat it as a compressed way of talking about exposure, drainage, light, and how a place feels to stand in, and most of the classical advice reads as careful observation.

What is on this site

• The five classical schools — Flying Stars, Eight Houses, San Yuan, San He, and the Form school, and how they disagree.
• The luopan — the feng shui compass, ring by ring.
• Numbers in feng shui — the Luoshu square and why nine numbers do so much work.
• How feng shui is taught — what a serious course covers, and what to ask before paying for one.
• The history of this domain — the Sydney architecture practice that ran this address for fifteen years.