A Book Review by Kartar Diamond
Feng Shui History: the story of Classical Feng Shui in China and the West from 221 BC to 2012 AD was published in 2012 by Golden Hoard Press and it deserves special honors for its unique and comprehensive content.
With the previous thirty+ books I have reviewed before this one, oftentimes another author’s mistakes, controversial approach or lack of details provides me with content for informative critiques and to interject my own experiences. Other times, I can vouch for an author’s impressive writing skills and information, recommending the book enthusiastically. In just a few cases, the verdict has been more like, “I read the book, so you don’t have to.” My advice is quite the opposite for Feng Shui History, as I’m challenged to do justice to it in my review. It’s actually a must-read for feng shui-philes.
With Dr. Stephen Skinner, many people already know how superior his books are, and on many levels. Whether from an academic or from a marketing standpoint, I am grateful that he took the opportunity to write a modern account of Feng Shui’s history. In some cases, he sets the record straight regarding misconceptions or falsehoods that have been perpetuated for a long time.
Skinner begins with photos and commentary about various lo p’ans (Chinese feng shui compass), from different ages and schools of Feng Shui. The lo p’an is not just the essential tool of the trade. Inherent to understanding the progression of the lop’an’s development, feng shui’s history is embedded in this fundamental instrument.
Skinner notes that archeological finds have given clues about how far back feng shui may have been used in cases where engravings on tombs included feng shui symbolism, astronomical depictions, or the use of carefully placed water tanks around prominent graves.
The author introduces readers to one of Feng Shui’s early masters named Kuei Ku Tzu, his origin story and his influence during the Ch’in (Qin) Dynasty (221-206 BCE). Other indications point to Feng Shui in practice, well-established during the following Han Dynasty, as Skinner notes the early dates and titles of various Classics. He covers the existence of the Shih plate, a direct predecessor of the lo p’an.
Skinner also explains two red herrings which have continued to cloud the history of Feng Shui: the South-pointing carriage, which was a primitive GPS system to prevent travelers from getting lost, but likely had nothing to do with Feng Shui.
Second: the notion of a spinning pottery spoon used in conjunction with the Shih plate as a precursor to the lodestone magnetized needle for a compass. Even my childhood Suzie Homemaker oven had more to do with a real oven than the spinning soup spoon had to do with an actual magnetized needle. And yet the imagery persists, perhaps just a nod to the Northern Ladle constellation.
Feng Shui History came after Skinner’s other great offering, Guide to the Feng Shui Compass, published in 2008. Borrowing from that book, Skinner shows how the Shih board was arranged and how even sinologist Joseph Needham had some misunderstandings about its function. Skinner includes a representation of a three-dimensional hemispherical Heaven Plate, which just visually lends itself to my own speculation about whether Chinese “fang shih” secretly understood our own planet to be round and not flat, any time before it was accepted into the mainstream. The spherical Heaven Plate was a depiction of a heavenly dome over a flat Earth. Changes in thinking happened around the 17th century via Jesuit missionaries and their talks with the feng shui pioneers at the time. Misconceptions about the Earth’s shape did not seem to impede the Chinese from making other astounding mathematical and astronomical discoveries hundreds of years ahead of the rest of the world.
Skinner states the Shih was used for one type of “military tactical divination called Liu Ren” and likely also used for Taoist magic. Helping to put feng shui developments in their correct order, the Shih used all the earthly branches and 10 stems, unlike later lop’ans which used only 8 stems, as a predecessor to the lo p’an used for the San He School. Skinner also mentions a second instrument called a “Dial Dipper,” with 365 marks to show the full year in day degrees on its outer edge, likely used as a supplement to the Shih.
Inside of the Three Kingdoms Period (220-265 CE) lived a Taoist fang-shih (predecessor to a feng shui master), named Chu Ko Liang. This was the individual who mastered Ch’i Men Tun Chia (aka Qi Men Dun Jia), although it’s not confirmed that he created the technique, translated as “Mysterious Hidden Doors for Commanding the Six Chia Spirits.”
Chu Ko Liang was known for being able to manipulate the wind and conjure up mist and fog, also used to hide the movements of armies. This system purportedly allows the practitioner to open and close portals (to different dimensions), make things disappear and re-appear. The rings of the lo p’an directly related to QMDJ calculations are apparently only found on older lo p’ans.
Just as a side bar: Within the conspiratorial and science-fiction communities, there are long-held beliefs that all the warring and drama between the Middle East and other nations has more to do with who controls the inter-dimensional portals (such as in Iraq and Iran), than it has to with oil or Islam. Perhaps the next resurgence of interest in Feng Shui will accompany the revelations through UFO disclosure, CERN and A.I.
Skinner notes an important classic by Master Kuan Lo (209-256 CE), titled Master Kuan’s Ti Li Indicator. It consolidates feng shui theory for the first time. Next comes the Chin (Jin) Dynasty (265-420 CE). Master Kuo P’o (aka Guo Po) wrote his classic Book of Burial in this time frame. Form School and Yin House are featured and he is credited with coining the phrase “feng shui” for what had previously been called Kan Yu.
In this review, I cherry-pick topics, names, dates or milestones which I find interesting; but I hope to inspire you to read the book for yourself. Skinner takes us through the centuries, discussing various historical figures, when they lived, what dynasty they were part of, and what they contributed to the development of Feng Shui and the lo p’an. Those who discovered how to make the compass needle more stable and accurate earned a spot in the annals of Feng Shui history, including those initially responsible for distinguishing between magnetic North and Astronomical North. Lai Pu Yi (fl. 1082-1135 CE) wrote about magnetic declination change over time and created the “Outer Heaven Plate” to compensate for two centuries in magnetic declination shift.
As a side bar, in my early years of practice, no Feng Shui teacher ever explained to me that magnetic declinations shift over time, easterly or westerly in different parts of the world. I had the humble experience of working remotely with a client who informed me of that phenomenon. I now teach my own students how to use the noaa.gov website:
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/calculators/magcalc.shtml
to compare the current declination with the declination at the time a structure was built. Fortunately, the declination calculator goes back to the year 1600. This deficiency in my early training also speaks to the major differences in who is attracted to study Feng Shui in current times, compared to the well-rounded and highly educated ancients in the field, some of whom were also engineers and geologists.
Wang Chi (990-1060 CE) established the lo p’an in its modern form and wrote voluminously about magnetized needles. With research done by Skinner and other historians before him, it is definitive that the invention of the compass was used for Feng Shui purposes long before its function for maritime navigation was discovered.
Skinner includes illustrations and reproductions of lo p’ans, detailing such changes as to how and why the Heaven, Earth, and Man Plates were positioned originally, compared to now and the fact that some rings on the lo p’an continue to hold their spot, even if their specific use has been largely abandoned in modern times.
Skinner enlightens us about which dynasties were more or less receptive to the publication of Feng Shui literature, comparing the Sun Dynasty with only a couple dozen titles, but during the T’ang Dynasty, more than a hundred books on Feng Shui were produced. Attempts were made to regulate the authenticity of the material, but to no avail.
The author mentions that Feng Shui became so much a part of Chinese culture during the T’ang Dynasty, that rings of the lo p’an were used as decoration on dining plates and mirrors. Perhaps the cliché use of astrology information on place mats in Chinese restaurants is a nod to those same traditions in the past!
Skinner injects stories, such as the one about Ts’ai Shen Yu from the 10th Century. His contributions led to new techniques by dividing the Earth Plate into 60 “Dragons”, resulting in a formula that he and his son used to plan their own Yin Houses (grave sites). Skinner writes, “almost all their sons and grandsons became famous, rich and Imperial Officials,” a testimony to the power of grave site divination. Or Old World nepotism, a skeptic would say.
Skinner sites the earliest evidence of the Flying Star practice from a calendar found in a cave, dating back to 982 CE, including depictions of both annual and monthly stars. Two early seminal teachers were Master Yang Yun Sung (and his disciple Tseng Wen Ch’an), linked to what became known as Form School. With Master Wang Chi (and his disciple Yeh Shu Liang), their focus on the lo p’an became known as the Compass School.
The author also clarifies that this division of just two major branches of Feng Shui from San He (Form School and Compass School) are misleading because both employ the use of the other and are inter-dependent.
Shao Yung (1011-1077 CE) is acknowledged for his influence on the inception of San Yuan Feng Shui, inspired by his interest in the trigrams and hexagrams from the I-Ching. His own calculations, theories, and his circular adaptation of the Fu Hsi square arrangement gave birth to the hexagram ring on the San Yuan lo p’an. Continuing, Hsu Ren Wang (1023-1063 CE) became regarded as the founder of Hsuan K’ung (Xuan Kong), although he maintained an oral teaching and left behind no books of his own.
The genius of our Feng Shui forefathers amazes me, such as with Tseng Kung Liang, who wrote in 1044 CE about using thermo-remanence to magnetize a needle, as an alternative to the original method of rubbing the needle with a lodestone. A Sung Encyclopedia, compiled after 1135 CE titled Shih Lin Chi, and edited by Ch’en Yuen Ching, documents the use of both wet-mounted and dry-mounted compasses, with emphasis on the needle’s north-south alignment. This is yet another indication that use of the lo p’an by “Taoist immortals” was in full swing by then.
Mid-point in the book, the author tracks the use of the compass in Europe and in the Arab world in tandem with its continual use and refinement in China. More the norm than the exception, important figures had many talents, such as Kuo Shou Ching, known as an astronomer, engineer and mathematician. During the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 CE), his calendrical calculations for the length of the tropical year beat out the Western Gregorian calendar by 300 years. He also created astronomical instruments and massive installations at the “Purple Mountain” Observatory. A progression of the lo p’an called the Lo Ching Chieh includes a ring using his calendar, helping to identify the pre-Ch’ing lo p’ans.
Lo p’ans were enough in demand that there was a province famous for their manufacture and from that location, Chao P’ang wrote a Feng Shui book called General K’an Yu Discussion. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE), Emperor Chu Yuan Chang was thought to have used Feng Shui advice for the capital in Beijing and put Kuan Tai Fu in charge of regulating standards and practices in Feng Shui, with masters graded and registered for their level of competence.
Based on commentary like this in the book, with so many examples of Feng Shui’s wide use and demand in mundane settings, it does put to rest other sources which have implied that Feng Shui was originally a mostly cloistered practice. Not that any Joe could learn it, (and certainly not women) as there were lineages and special qualifications for studying and internship. And yet, others not formally ordained could also obtain books and self-study was possible.
Skinner continues to feature the rock stars of Feng Shui history, moving into the Ch’ing Dynasty (1644-1911 CE), where Chiang Ta Hung (Jiang Da Hong) hit his stride. While he probably was not the founder of the Flying Star School, he contributed important commentary on Hsuan K’ung texts. Regrettably like his predecessors, he did not write his own books and felt that Hsuan K’ung (Xuan Kong) should not be taught to just anybody.
A lo p’an was named after him, like other masters, so his contribution put him in the “Grand” master category. He is also credited with devising a ring on the lo p’an for the Substitution Star charts (Out of trigram compass points). Jian Da Hong was also known for trying to simplify some of the Feng Shui teachings being passed down, by dismissing the techniques he did not think were effective and I read elsewhere that he even disputed the veracity of the Eight Mansion School.
Back and forth, the Chinese emperors had varying degrees of receptivity to Feng Shui. Skinner includes Emperor Ch’ien Lung, who reigned from 1736-1796. So invested in separating fact from fiction that he had a group of Feng Shui masters in his administration. Skinner commented that one could claim the Emperor’s team was excellent as this is the time frame when Beijing prospered and may have become the largest city in the world. His Feng Shui “auditors” reviewed the previous thousand years of writings and created an Imperial Feng Shui volume called the Treatise on Harmonizing Times and Distinguishing Directions.
Skinner mentions monk Jo Kuan Tao Ren as the author of an Eight Mansion School classic, the Eight Mansion Bright Mirror. The earliest known copy dates from 1790, but a lot of the material is included in the 1741 Treatise on Harmonizing Times, as well as from a 1609 Ming Imperial Encyclopedia. It may never be possible to pinpoint the correct origin time frame for Pa Chai (Ba Zhai). Eight Mansion distinctions for the Eight Basic House types did not have a ring on the lo p’an, but older lo p’ans had cheat sheets attached to their back side. All of this is mind blowing when compared to modern times and how Feng Shui is perceived and so misunderstood in the West, even while embraced at the same time by popular culture.
When it became known that President Ronald Reagan’s first lady Nancy was a believer in astrology, most Americans probably thought that was eccentric at best, but not to be taken seriously. Meanwhile, American history is dripping with occult symbolism and practices. As legendary financier J.P. Morgan once allegedly said, “Millionaires don’t use astrology; billionaires do.”
Skinner marks the end of the Imperial Era as the next chapter for Feng Shui, noting the manufacture of lo p’ans for centuries and continuing to this day, with a sharp increase in lo p’an production at the end of the 20th century, including in Taiwan. Newer lo p’ans have placed some, not all, of the Flying Star charts into new rings, as well as Eight Mansion and Dragon Gate Formulas. It became evident that trying to cram so much onto a lo p’an was not visually practical.
Religion, medicine and Feng Shui all took a major hit in the early 20th century with China in 1927 banning the open practice of Feng Shui. The Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s and 1970’s triggered a mass exodus of Feng Shui practitioners from mainland China. Lucky for the world at large, as they migrated to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and Australia, writes Skinner. Even in the upper ranks, Communist officials who utilized Feng Shui were expelled from the Party.
Skinner then explains how the study and research of Feng Shui has seeped back into Chinese academic circles, from those with areas of expertise and backgrounds in urban planning, as well as a Professor from the Department of Architecture at South China University of Technology. A Feng Shui seminar was allowed to be held in 1992 at Beijing University. Even my own teacher, Master Sang, would return to China and advertise a Feng Shui class, calling it “Environmental Design” or something similarly coded. He said that his classes were likely audited by the government, but he maintained that officials welcomed his services privately.
Skinner lists many 20th and 21st century Feng Shui luminaries, including some who I had not heard of. It has inspired me to seek out their books and other publications. He includes the late Master Yap Cheng Hai’s lineage, as well as the still young Master Joey Yap, who has attained an impressive global following and who has provided quite a few translations of Chinese Classics. Singapore has continued to produce Feng Shui practitioners of note and we learn about Reverend Hung Ch’uan (Hong Choon), (1907-1990).
Skinner details the practice of “tilting doors,” using the Hyatt Hotel in Singapore as an example. Certainly, at least one School of Feng Shui believes that by simply angling a main door into a different sector, that the whole Flying Star chart can change. This has been recommended to suit the changing 20-Year Periods. I have my own doubts about this method, but will not elaborate here.
Dr. Evelyn Lip Mong Har was one of the first to write a Feng Shui book in 1979 and she went on to earn a Ph.D. for her thesis Chinese Temple Architecture in Singapore, which includes the Feng Shui influences on temple building. The author also lists Tan Khoon Yong, born in 1954, who taught Feng Shui in big bold ways, fully embracing Western marketing, to include advertisements on the back of Singapore’s commuter buses. Master Tan, Stephen Skinner, along with eight others, formed a committee that set up the IFSA (International Feng Shui Association) in 2004. International Feng Shui Conferences followed. The founders are all substantial contributors to the preservation of classical Feng Shui, listed in the book with more of their accolades, including a personal friend of mine, Master Gahle Atherton.
This list has also inspired me to further investigate books written by Master Vincent Koh and others who have translated Chinese works into English. The Appendices and Bibliography are filled with more classical and traditional resources, enough to keep a person busy researching for years.
Skinner then shares the evolution of Feng Shui in various parts, such as in Hong Kong, featuring Masters Ng Sze Ching and Choy Pak Lai, authors of more books and the Chinese Tung Shu Almanac. Skinner writes that most folks in Hong Kong love Feng Shui and their own celebrated Master Raymond Lo has made an international impact as well. Fellow contemporaries included Master Rocky Siu Kwong, both a scholar and TV personality, as well as Master Wong Ting Chee, who popularized Zi Wei Dou Shu (Purple Star Astrology).
Skinner gives us the headlines for an actual Feng Shui scandal between Master Tony Chan and his client/lover Nina Wang. He was charged with fraud when he produced a Will, directly after her death, which gave Chan her entire 13 billion dollar estate.
The author tells us about Feng Shui in Taiwan and Korea, along with stories about how politicians in those countries have literally desecrated their political opponents’ ancestral graves in hopes of increasing their chances of winning an election over the other candidate. This is based on the premise that a good Feng Shui grave site will bless several generations to follow.
When their actions were discovered, some had to step down over corruption charges. Feng Shui was so popular in Taiwan, curiosity led to a study on housing prices and the correlation with good or bad feng shui. The findings revealed that homes with bad feng shui sold for 10% less than the better homes.
Korea has their own high demand version of Feng Shui called Pungsu-jiri-seol (Wind-Water-Earth-Principles) delivered to the Koreans by various Chinese channels, which Skinner outlines. Some of the Korean books contain information akin to Form School, which fill in the blanks for teachings missing from the ancient Chinese texts.
Japan has their version of Feng Shui called Fusui and like some of the Korean texts, there are Japanese books which give more detail than the surviving Chinese classics, such as rules for gardens around a residence. Skinner tells a surprising fact during the Japanese occupation of Korea; the Japanese used a rather deliberate feng shui offensive measure to undermine the Koreans. They buried long iron poles deep underground to re-direct the chi flow, as Skinner writes, “intended as a sort of destructive geomantic acupuncture.”
Skinner also mentions that a Japanese variant of Feng Shui is Nine Star Ki, as a system to categorize personalities, such as a type of personal astrology. He writes that the system was devised or popularized by famous macrobiotic proponent Michio Kushi. This is only partially true, as the Japanese took Nine Star Ki to a much higher level a century or more before Kushi. Prior, Nine Star Ki was also called Five Star Astrology and very much an outgrowth of Chinese Metaphysics. Japan has their own Nine Star Ki masters, whose backgrounds are as intriguing as some of the Chinese Feng Shui masters from the 1700’s.
The author continues with a review of Feng Shui in the UK, mentioning Professor Stephan Feuchtwang. According to Skinner, “his 1974 doctoral thesis An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese Geomancy, provided the best 20th century survey of the contents of the lo p’an in English.” Skinner was part of the UK wave with his own first book, the Living Earth Manual of Feng Shui, written in 1976.
Skinner manages to diplomatically cover Lillian Too’s marketing success, while confirming that much of it was short on classical Feng Shui, along with the even greater deviations made by Thomas Lin Yun, with his Black Hat style exceedingly popular in the United States.
One day back in the 1990’s, I was informed that a Lin Yun follower was bad-mouthing me at business networking meetings, claiming that “Kartar Diamond is not a spiritual person because she doesn’t embrace all forms of Feng Shui.” I confronted that individual, told them my feelings were hurt; they denied ever saying what was reported to me by others. It may appear I have held onto a grudge, which is not the case at all. I find it humorous decades later. Since Skinner dishes a little gossip here and there in his book, I thought I would give readers a little inside scoop of what it has been like to directly experience the competitive world of Feng Shui.
There was also a convergence around 1996 between western “intuitive” feng shui and Nine Star Ki practitioners like Jon Sandifer and William Spear, both influenced by the founder of macrobiotics, Michio Kushi. I should add that a number of these late 20th century western authors also added concerns over EMF’s (electromagnetic frequencies) and other modern health hazards, which turned out to be almost prophetic in terms of what bad Feng Shui we are all now bombarded with: from wi-fi and 5G to the ever-increasing omnipresence of A.I.
We learn about Tony Holdsworth’s commanding Feng Shui influence in London in the late 1990’s, as well as Derek Walter’s expertise in Chinese Astrology. In these closing chapters, Feng Shui History gets very nostalgic for me personally, as Skinner recounts the 1990’s when I was also consulting during the massive “trendy” years in the U.S.
Back then, when I was routinely seeing 7-10 new clients per week, I wondered myself how long the fascination with Feng Shui would last. Some Feng Shui personalities were a bit too cult-like for my tastes. Some behaved like they were involved with a multi-level marketing scheme, selling folk remedies and knick-knacks galore. This only increased perceptions that Feng Shui was just a Chinese superstition.
As the publisher of Feng Shui for Modern Living magazine (1998-2001), Skinner recounts its enormous success, translated into numerous languages, outselling Elle Deco magazine at one point. People who would have never initially read a book on Feng Shui subscribed to the magazine, helping popularize it world-wide. In Europe, most countries had their resident experts and Skinner lists their names as well as the Associations, Guilds, Networks and Alliances they started. Skinner notes which countries leaned more towards classical Feng Shui and which were more receptive to the “soft” versions, aka New Age Black Hat founded by Thomas Lin Yun.
Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Italy: Skinner interviewed many dozens around the world. Also included is a big section for the United States, where Skinner prints a fun fact that in 1849, there were only 54 Chinese living in California. By 1876 (news of the Gold Rush), that number ballooned to 151,000 in the U.S., of that 116,000 in the state of California. As I sit here typing away in Irvine California (known for its planned communities and large Chinese population), interest in Feng Shui did not really catch on in the U.S. until relatively recently.
What primed the American consciousness first was the transformational 1960’s, where fascination with the I-Ching, Buddhism, Chinese medicine, Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, and Bruce Lee of martial arts fame helped usher in a more receptive audience–finally to include Feng Shui. Even as a teenager, I was reading books on Eastern mysticism, like The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and writing a song titled Ying-Yang, more than a decade before I had heard of Feng Shui.
From the 1980’s through 2012, Skinner lists the odd bedfellows of classical Feng Shui practitioners with the New Age Feng Shui celebrities and authors, some of whom shared conference stages, such as with the Black Hat promoter James Moser organizing several International Feng Shui Conferences. They featured practitioners from numerous traditions and styles. Skinner states plainly that he debated whether or not to leave out all the New Age/Black Hat authors and consultants, but opted to include them because this group definitely made Feng Shui more popular in the West and dominated the field for a long time, in spite of seriously adding to the confusion as to what Feng Shui really is. Sarah Rossbach’s 1987 Interior Design with Feng Shui was immensely popular, inspiring many other Black Hat books to follow.
The late Angi Ma Wong, who must have felt threatened by the surge of non-Asian practitioners, told people locally in her seminars that you had to be Chinese to practice Feng Shui. In her heyday, she appeared on Oprah, CNN and CBS. Around the same time, then-real estate developer Donald Trump said during an NBC Nightline interview that he uses Feng Shui advisors, including Manhattan Master Pun-Yin who worked on Trump Tower.
New Ager Karen Kingston was one of the few authors who genuinely wrote national best-sellers, more in the name of feng shui, than in actual feng shui. As a renown space clearer, she may have been the one to indirectly launch the whole space-clearing /de-cluttering craze.
There is a brief, but thoughtful paragraph about Master Larry Sang and the American Feng Shui Institute, where I get mentioned in a footnote at the bottom of the page. Skinner credits me with authoring a dozen books on traditional Feng Shui, which is not exactly the case. By 2012, I had published three trade-paperback books, a half dozen e-books and a couple dozen Case Study lesson plans available on my website. Since then, the case study files now total 38; they are also part of my on-line private mentoring program. The sum total of my written materials is more than a couple thousand pages.
Skinner gives lengthy coverage to Thomas Lin Yun’s ultra-processed version of feng shui. There is also a section on the development of Feng Shui in Australia, from where Stephen Skinner was born. The late feng shui architect Howard Choy and his accomplishments are covered, along with Roger Green, whose controversial Southern Hemisphere Theory never picked up steam beyond his direct circle of students. If you ever wondered about Feng Shui studies being accredited anywhere outside of a dedicated Feng Shui School, in 1999 the Australian College of Environmental Studies was the first college in Australia to offer government accredited certification in Feng Shui. In 2010, New York’s Metropolitan Institute of Design became the first U.S. certificate program, licensed by the New York State Department of Education.
With many other accolades and professional achievements detailed in Feng Shui History, Skinner also listed businesses which publicly acknowledged their use of Feng Shui back in 2011. Remember, some corporations and individuals prefer to keep their Feng Shui ties under wraps for a variety of reasons. I will just quote a list from the book right here:
“ABC, AT & T, Borders Bookstore, Chase Manhattan, Citibank, CNN, Coca Cola, D.R. Horton Homes, Eli Lilly, Federal Express, Fuji Hill Holiday, Honeywell, Hyatt Hotels, Hyatt Regency, IBM, Intel Corp, Lucent Technologies, MGM Grand Hotel and Resorts, Mercedes Benz, Merrill Lynch, Business Guides Microsoft, Motorola, Nike Corp, Shell Oil, Trump Towers, Universal Studios, W Hotels, Walt Disney.” This is from Skinner’s research and interviews. No doubt there are hundreds, if not thousands more corporations and elite individuals from back then and since to add to the roster.
Don’t miss reading the Appendices, where Skinner sneaks in more new information, including maps and Table Charts for the book. He mentions that what are often described as Feng Shui Schools (such as Form School or Compass School) are really only methods, not actual classical traditions. For the lo p’an, while much has been written over the Ages from varying sources, just the Imperial Encyclopedia alone, (produced in the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties is thousands of volumes. My review is just a small sampling of what the book contains. Let me extend my apologies to the many I failed to feature, and please excuse any misspellings or incorrect dates.
Modern-day practitioners may not have yet made discoveries at the level of our Feng Shui ancestors, but we can celebrate having advanced a global interest in Feng Shui, making it available to people at virtually any economic level, along with amazing technological tools to perform our services, including doing audits remotely. The masters from centuries ago may have marveled at the prospect of these internet techniques, while others would disapprove and insist a Feng Shui evaluation can only be done in-person.
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Feng Shui Book Review Series
