A Book Review by Kartar Diamond
First published in 1990, this and many other feng shui books are called “evergreens” in the publishing world: the information is always relevant. Lip’s book, Feng Shui for the Home, is less than 100 pages, but it has its own uniqueness. As an architect, who was initially unaware of Feng Shui and later frustrated by projects where her designs were rejected by feng shui adherents, Lip made it her business to study feng shui for herself and even run some tests to validate the theories.
One of my objectives with all these book reviews is to extract anything special about the book or author. She states in the Introduction that “a south orientation was preferable because wind from Mongolia carried a great deal of yellow dust and was terribly cold.” This further complements the long-held assumption that South has been the preferred facing direction for a house, in part because south is associated with summer, heat, youth and other “yang” attributes. That being said, this is an example of how some feng shui edict which was true for one region may not be true for other environments. Locally, in my own area, I have taken the Santa Ana winds seriously and forfeited the romance of living in the hills so that I would be safely outside of the known fire hazard zones.
When describing the Five Elements, she refers to the metal category as “gold.” This is something to contemplate because in current times we assume any metal material fits the quota. This includes brass, bronze, silver, aluminum, and copper. But perhaps gold was the original “gold standard,” possessing more metal Qi than other substances which may only be inferior substitutes for gold.
She writes that early Taoists and Confucians, who were also geographers, were known as Di Li Jia, perhaps one of the original titles for a feng shui practitioner. Lip mentions that the magnetic compass was invented by the 8th century, giving way to the geomancer’s luo pan and by the 9th century a special compass was used for siting tombs (Yin House Feng Shui).
Even though the book is titled Feng Shui for the Home, Lip also covers commercial properties and temples. She also delves into natural landscapes, such as with interpretations of mountain ranges. This is more understandable since the home and its occupants can be directly influenced by nearby mountains or any natural landscape feature, including water courses or views.
In one section she notes that if a house faces higher ground or is backed up to a river that the front door should be moved to the river side or the lower land level side. These are general truths within Form School Feng Shui; however, often the house which has the river in the back may have already been arranged to actually face the river, regardless of where the main door is located. Generally speaking, the more “yang” side is the facing side and that includes the side of the house with the most views. It would be a shame to not have major views of a river, in addition to being a safety hazard. Not all homes face the street and the formal entrance is down the list of other prioritized features which indicate sitting and facing.
We also have to factor in more considerations before deciding on the ideal entrance location and the author mentions a few, such as the year of birth of the owner, or even the hour of their birth.
Some of her interpretations are stated without explanation, such as deeming a house with an extended northeast or southwest sector being unfavorable. From my experience, this is too generic, like saying being born in New York or Los Angeles is unlucky. In another chapter she states that directions northeast and southwest have been called “gui men” or doors of the devil. She marks the lucky good Qi spots in odd-shaped houses that resemble Chinese characters, such as an H-shaped house which looks like the Chinese word gong, which means “work.” The implication being that if you live in an H-shaped house, you will have to work hard or work all the time.
Like most traditional feng shui teachers, she mentions that the totality of a person’s luck is summed up from five influences: Yi ming, er yun, san feng shui, si de, and wu du shu. These five influences are: fate, luck, feng shui, virtue, and education. This clearly implies that good or bad feng shui is not the cause of everything which happens to us in life, instead it is roughly about 20% of the influences.
Lip describes two main forms of geomantic assessment as “intuitive Form School” and the Compass method, with a shout out to “San Yuan Di Li” as one of the Compass Schools (since there are more than one compass school). It just strikes me as odd personally that Form School would be described as “intuitive” because there are so many defined rules and observations which students learn, as opposed to just naturally intuiting. For example, if a road is long and narrow, ending at a house, this carries the Qi in a harmful way by the time it reaches the house. This is Form School and one might not intuitively recognize that, but rather learn it as a principle in how Qi flows. What could be described as “intuitive” for sure is when a mountain range is interpreted differently by each practitioner for what kind of image it produces in the mind.
Another curiosity is a short list of good and bad dimensions, without explanation. For example, why is the length of a piece of furniture between 26 7/8th to 37 5/8th centimeters bad, but between 37 5/8th to 48 3/8th centimeters good? I have yet to find a Geomancer who can explain what the reference point is and how the feng shui ruler works.
Lip also has a Table Chart noting a good entrance direction for each person based on their year of birth and gender. This would appear to be classic Eight Mansion School Feng Shui, except the direction she lists as the best entrance is simply the direction associated with the individual’s personal “ming gua” or personal trigram. This is always described in the Eight Mansion School (Ba Zhai), as the most relaxing and peaceful direction. No doubt, we can say that could be a good direction to sleep in and not a bad direction for an entrance. But for a main entrance, most practitioners from that School would be aiming for an entrance in the “Tan Lang” direction for major wealth luck.
Chapter Five is frustrating for me because she has pages of boxy diagrams facing different directions and under columns referencing 20 Year Periods, such as 1984-2003 being the last Period 7 or 2004-2023 being the last Period 8. She shows 24 different directions a house could face for each Period, without labeling the exact sector. The reader would have to know that she is angling each diagram slightly to suit the 24 mountains (directions) used in the San Yuan School. This particular school is Xuan Kong Fei Xing (Flying Star School).
Lip color-codes in red the spot in each diagram “where the Qi is located.” She must mean the best Qi since Qi is everywhere. She instructs readers to have the entrance where noted or when using the diagram for a single room, to group the furnishings in that area. There are many problems with this advice, not the least of which is that one or two of the best color-coded spots lands right at the entrance to the house or the entrance to a room. No, you should not create a congested entrance by cluttering up an area by the door with furnishings. This defies good Qi flow and common sense.
Without explanation, it appears that she is identifying the desirable Qi in the sitting and/or facing for each diagram, which by definition will host the “wang” (strong-most energized) star for each Period. These are not the only good spots or directional zones however.
In fact, she shows another example where a floor plan is facing east, but identifies a few westerly directions inside as being the best spots. This is not going to be the case using the popular Eight Mansion School, so she must be referencing another School I am not familiar with. She also uses a variation on the Nine Palace Grid method for dividing up floor plans, which looks like a compromise between the Nine Palace Grid and Di Li- Pie Shape Sector method.
The book continues as an odd mixture of very simplistic common-sense principles, followed by rigid depictions of favorable or unfavorable areas, without any explanation for how those assessments have been made. In her defense, I did something similar in one chapter of my book, The Feng Shui Matrix, where I noted where the best and worst areas would be for any Period 8 house. Without teaching the calculations that got me to those conclusions, I did at least mention that these zones were determined based on the Flying Star charts (Time of construction combined with compass orientation). I saved the step-by-step instructional part for creating a Flying Star Chart for my third book, The Feng Shui Continuum.
In one confusing section, she remarks how an apartment could be arranged to suit an occupant born in both the year and hour of the Rat. The Rat is associated with the direction of North. She then shows a proposed change to have his bed arranged so his head will point to the south. For a Rat person, sleeping head to the Horse (South) is called the Chong or Opposition direction. It is to be avoided because it can drain the person physically or financially. Therefore, Lip’s example doesn’t make sense to me.
An interesting Table Chart regarding the bathroom toilet reveals that people should avoid having a toilet in the direction related to their own Chinese zodiac sign’s direction, such as a Rooster not having a toilet in the West or a Monkey person should avoid a toilet in the Southwest. There may be some truth to this, but with families constituting more than one Zodiac sign in the house, this principle could be very hard to accommodate.
Lip offers examples of symbolism in the chapters covering various interior arrangements, such as hanging a flute over a doorway to dispel sha qi. This is one of the Chinese homophones, where the Cantonese word for flute sounds like the word for “disappear.” I used to completely dismiss what I thought was excessive symbolism in my field, but as I get on in years, I find some of this rather intriguing in how the mind can create so much of our reality. She says that a square room is a balanced shape that stands for justice and authority.
As the author illustrates, the use of protective walls surrounding the Forbidden City turn out to be a kind of “Feng Shui Border Security.” She prefers a round dining room table as the circle symbolizes heavenly blessings and the number of chairs at the table should be even, such as 4, 6 or 8 chairs. Apparently, a single chair or odd numbers represent loneliness.
Using symbolism down to pieces of furniture, Lip presents the ideal dimensions of a wall unit and notes that a chair shaped like a tortoise represents longevity. In a section on Color and Lighting, the author details that the ancient Chinese had very definitive uses for color. Yellow was for the imperial household and green for its imperial subjects. Red symbolized happiness, fame, and luck, which is still the case today.
She mentions that the roof of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing used circular blue glazed tiles to appease the heavenly gods as blue has spiritual connotations. This is interesting to me as many years ago a very famous Feng Shui personality, whose name rhymes with Jillian Poo, wrote that a blue tiled roof spelled utter doom and disaster for the occupants. Was that a mistake? Or is it just considered disrespectful to use blue tiles on the roof of an ordinary house when they should be reserved only for temples?
Lip has a chapter on patterns, such as what you find in so many décor items, including furniture, rugs, draperies and wall paper. The Chinese and Feng Shui symbolism is ubiquitous: not only does the lotus flower represent endurance and righteousness, but the very vase itself is a symbol of peace. An elephant image connotes wisdom and deer represent wealth, along with gold coins or images of rippling water.
In closing chapters on office spaces and shops, she covers the importance of addresses, which I have always referred to numerologists. Feng Shui numerology is based on different criteria than Western Pythagorean numerology and once again, the sound of a word carries a lot of weight. She explains that 2 means “easy,” 8 means “becoming rich,” and 9 means “for a long period.” This is how an office address of 289 can translate as “easy to become rich for a long period.” To the degree that anyone has much control over their address can already indicate whether the person is in a good or bad luck phase. The choice of words to use for a store name can be manipulated to represent the Productive Cycle of the Five Elements when certain words allude to water, wood, fire, earth or gold. Fortunately, you don’t have to rely solely on your address or business name in order to enjoy good Feng Shui!
These are details, which make up the bulk of the author’s book and it’s worth it for me to scour through it for little nuggets to discuss, such as her tidbit that some business owners will bolt their desk to the floor so that their desk cannot be inadvertently shifted out of its luck position. However, if someone wants to read a very comprehensive book on classical Feng Shui, I would refer them instead to Masters Eva Wong, Gayle Atherton, or Dr. Stephen Skinner (book reviews for all forthcoming!) These authors provide many more explanations on theory and practical applications for common situations.
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Book Review Blog Series
