A Book Review by Kartar Diamond
Published in 1987, Interior Design With Feng Shui launched the feng shui craze in the West in the 1990’s. There were a few other English-language feng shui books in circulation, but this one captured the imaginations of so many, and even I got interested in feng shui because of this book. Fortunately, I ended up meeting Master Sang two weeks later and got redirected toward traditional feng shui. I hesitated to review this book because I knew in advance that I would be critical of its contents.
This was not Rossbach’s first book, nor her last, and she definitely has impressive writing skills. Even the Foreward by the late Lin Yun is eloquently written and one can imagine his charm for those who studied with him in-person. Rossbach met Lin Yun in Hong Kong and she states in the Introduction that she took classes with him, but didn’t say what he was teaching.
According to Cate Bramble who searched for his credentials, Lin Yun never appeared to have earned the title of doctor or Professor and was teaching English as a second language, while dispensing feng shui advice and becoming a well-known personality in Hong Kong. This tidbit becomes relevant for a number of reasons, including that he began to speak in Chinese, with an English interpreter, when he came to the United States.
Rossbach writes that she found out Lin Yun had moved to San Francisco and around that time he changed his title from Professor to Master Lin Yun. Eventually his disciples called him Grand Master and after his passing in 2010, his group now refers to him post-mortem as “His Holiness.”
Following a path similar to other gurus from faraway lands who come to America, journalist Laurel Wellman visited his temple and wrote a lengthy expose of Lin Yun for the San Francisco Weekly, pointing out all the telltale signs of a “feng shui cult” in progress. In the opening pages of this book, both Lin Yun and Rossbach carefully state that what Lin Yun taught (he called it the Black Hat School of Feng Shui) was an “unorthodox sect of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism that in China mixed Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Bon, with indigenous Chinese beliefs and practices. It combines religious and philosophical Taoism, Confucianism, folk cures and customs, and feng shui.”
I think the operative words here are “unorthodox sect” and “folk cures.” And with that, western followers of Lin Yun got very creative, dominated the field in publishing feng shui books, and added distinctly western and New Age interpretations to the mix.
Rossbach introduces readers to the original concepts and use of feng shui, as in one passage, “The landscape was venerated. China’s religions, philosophies, poetry, and landscape scrolls often reflected a desire to capture and identify with the power and beauty, balance and immortality of nature. To go against nature’s course, the Chinese believed, would ultimately hurt man. So, when building a city, a road, or a farm, they took great pains to avoid disturbing an earthly dragon. The Chinese called on shamans, who, like architectural dowsers, searched out ch’i to discern the optimal place to build a farm, a temple, or a house, or to site an entire city or an ancestor’s grave.”
After giving us the scope of feng shui and the Taoist principles behind the reverence infused in it, she spans briefly into Yin-Yang theory, and then distinguishes between human ch’i and house ch’i, where the metaphors take on such symbolism as roads and water ways comparable to the body’s circulatory system. Five Element Theory is touched on and then a nod to the profound I-Ching, one of the most famous ancient books of divination. She sets the table for how feng shui balance can be achieved, but then takes a sharp turn to delineate only two main ways that design flaws can be solved.
One way is the “ru-shr” way. This is the logical, reasonable and rational approach. The other way is “chu-shr,” describing that approach as “irrational, illogical, transcendental, or mystical.” Rossbach was already a feng shui convert, so to call any aspect of feng shui illogical or irrational seems illogical to me, especially after providing convincing portrayals of feng shui as a harmonious collaboration with Nature. That being said, she is laying the groundwork for what is to follow and that includes a lot of Black Hat “cures” which do seem strange, even for someone like me, who has a high tolerance for strangeness.
Further, she writes that Lin Yun asserts the “ru-shr” way is only 10% effective while “chu-shr” applications are between “110-120 percent” effective. I’m not sure how something can be more than 100% effective, but maybe that is just part of the illogical thinking behind chu-shr. To be clear, I am not dismissing the mystical or the things which work that cannot be explained by western scientific standards; after all, feng shui is by definition a metaphysical practice. What I object to is the way feng shui is often presented, teetering on the edge of magical thinking when common sense and good design may in fact be more practical, effective, and the first course of action.
If you have a plumbing problem for instance, it is better to get a plumber to fix the leak than to wrap a red string around the pipe. If you have a noisy neighbor, it will probably be more effective to sound-proof your windows, than to hang a Ba’gua mirror outside pointed at your noisy neighbor. In another section, the author recommends you hang firecrackers to the branches of a tree which is blocking your front entrance. Most people would be inclined to trim the tree instead.
Throughout the book, I have to remind myself that both Lin Yun and the author did make a disclaimer about their version of feng shui as an “unorthodox sect.” Years later when Lin Yun ran into Master Sang, he joked nervously that “what we do is not really feng shui, but we call it that.”
I can also justify my skepticism because over the decades I have been brought in many times as a second opinion after clients didn’t get the results they wanted from failed Black Hat cures. In fact, I’m reminded of a comment made by authentic feng shui master Eva Wong about how it can take many years before a person realizes that they had been misguided by a poorly trained or deceptive feng shui practitioner. The placebo effect can be very strong for certain people.
Part of the Black Hat system is to categorize “cures” into 9 areas. Aside from the fact that traditional feng shui offers a lot more than 9 cures, the Black Hat list contains:
- Bright or light-refracting objects (like mirrors, lights and crystal balls).
- Sounds (like chimes and bells).
- Living objects (like plants, flowers and water features).
- Moving objects (like mobiles, windmills, and fountains)
- Heavy objects (like stones and statues)
- Electrically powered objects (like TV, sound systems and your HVAC)
- Bamboo flutes (a category all its own!)
- Colors (self-explanatory)
- Others (?)
I could go into over-drive with each one of these categories, but notice here that mention of Ying-Yang or Five Element Theory (both fundamental to Feng Shui) are not included on the list. My first teacher Master Sang laughed one day remarking that he never heard of a “crystal ball” until he came to the United States. He was already astonished by all the New Age adaptations to feng shui. The category of electrically powered objects certainly does not speak to any ancient Feng Shui practices and bypasses common knowledge that devices which surround us with electrical fields can be harmful to our health.
The best category is “others” which is a catch-all where anything goes and a Black Hat person could claim whatever they are doing in the name of feng shui fits into this category. One example she gave in the “others” category is putting chalk under the bed to cure a backache. Well, this is not the exclusive domain of Feng Shui. In other cultures, they may put a bowl of rice in a room or any substance that will absorb moisture out of the air to achieve the same result and relieve an arthritic condition.
I did get a kick out of Rossbach explaining that the Chinese use the words “feng shui” (wind-water) as slang for gambling, as in the wind blows away the money (shui). The Chinese also like to call a cemetery a “nightclub” because things get active there at night. I even appreciate her explaining the purpose of bamboo flutes and how the correct angling of a pair on overhead beams can create a partial octagonal Ba’gua shape. Fair enough. At least she notes they are symbolic.
In traditional feng shui, the recommendations would be to a) not have exposed beams, b) avoid sitting or sleeping directly under an exposed beam, or c) create a false dropped ceiling under the beams to allow for a flat ceiling and smoother flow of air currents (Qi) in the room.
There are actually a lot of sound, universally agreed upon examples of Qi Flow in this book. Form School is a big portion of all Feng Shui Schools and almost everyone can stand by the notions we have regarding such things as T-junctions, excessively long corridors, and direct alignment of a front door to back door. The differences, however, come with the solutions offered by the Black Hat sect for these interior design flaws or problems with the exterior environment.
The Black Hat way relies heavily on solving design and landform problems with mirrors, lights and other items from the 9 Cures list. Some of these objects can work, but other less conspicuous adjustments don’t appear to be an option. In fact, in a later section of the book she has “Before” and “After” photographs of mirrored kitchen and bathroom walls, where I think the Before photos without the mirrors make the rooms look calmer and less cluttered.
Occasionally, an item from the 9 Cures List could also be haphazard when it comes to the unintentional misuse of the Five Elements. This will occur frequently if a Black Hat practitioner tries to solve a problem with a water feature or something that could qualify as the fire element, but the practitioner is unaware that these elements might be inappropriate for other reasons.
Here is a concrete example: Let’s say that an entrance door is aligned directly with the base of a staircase. This is an agreed Qi flow problem which can make it harder for the Qi to properly circulate in the house. The Black Hat person might suggest that a live plant be placed along the side of the stairs to slow down the Qi flow. This can be a good idea and more natural looking than hanging a lead crystal ball (their first choice) from the ceiling between the door and the stairs. However, unbeknownst to the practitioner, this could be a bad area for a live plant (Wood Phase) based on when the house was built and its compass alignment. The Black Hat folks don’t take actual compass readings or know how to factor in the age of a building.
An innocent live plant in the wrong location can encourage health problems like issues with digestion, bones or muscles. Without using traditional diagnostic tools, the Black Hat approach is incomplete and often results in negative side-effects.
Rossbach has mostly uncontested interpretations on road alignments in relation to homes and businesses. This includes the nuances of commercial properties having doors which can attract more business based on their angle to oncoming traffic.
Where we get into murky material is the chapter on shapes. She describes certain shapes of houses or rooms as being problematic, but then contradicts those statements later on with identical examples. The author also predicts the influences on certain shaped homes or rooms, using the generic Ba’gua Map as a reference point. For instance, when looking at a house shape illustrated in her book, if the back left-hand corner is missing, she states it will be bad for the occupant’s finances. If the back right-hand corner is missing, she states that the marriage will fail. This is not how traditional feng shui is administered and we haven’t even gotten introduced to the Black Hat Ba’gua Map at this point either. Claims are made without describing how she comes to those conclusions.
Setting traditional Feng Shui vs. Black Hat aside, just within the Black Hat curriculum she presents contradictions. For example, she shows a boxy house shape with a small entrance bumped out, describing it like a nose on a face. This gets interpreted as a design flaw which creates missing zones on either side of the bumped-out entrance. The more universal interpretation is that there are no missing areas; rather the bumped out “nose” is an extension of one directional zone (page 73), which can make that area stronger.
On page 75 she shows an identical shape as Example #8 and writes that it is a lucky shape. She also lists under House Shapes that illustrated Example #4 is lucky, but pages before Rossbach remarks that shapes like that are viewed as a Tombstone and to be avoided because they are a reminder of death.
Her examples of an L-shaped House and a U-shaped house are very modified, bulky versions and hardly qualify as the more extreme L or U-shape where negative outcomes are well-documented. Next comes a section on door alignments. It’s mostly accurate, but then on page 85 we see the classic two doors directly opposite each other and the illustration is labeled “Good Door Alignment.” Other schools refer to this as an unfavorable design flaw, sometimes described as being like two opposing mouths shouting at each other.
She dispenses normal advice here and there, such as re-hinging a door that opens up to a wall instead of opening to the larger portion of a room (rarely seen). But other problems she showcases continue to be solved with mirrors and crystal balls, as well as the recommendation to place a wind chime inside a house. It should be noted that traditional practitioners do not recommend wind chimes for interiors. The 6-rod metal chimes, in particular, can attract a ghost. Not kidding.
Rossbach continues with sections on good and bad Qi flow with regards to Doors, Windows, Stairs, Ceilings, Beams and floor plan suggestions for the ideal location for certain rooms, such as a bedroom at the back of the house for maximum quiet and privacy. It’s a rare example of the “ru-shur” approach: common sense.
She alerts readers to the potential Pavlovian effect when entering your home into a certain room, such as wanting to eat if the first room you enter into from outside is the kitchen. These are all legitimate Feng Shui concerns, but the solutions she offers continue to be dominated by hanging mirrors, crystal balls, wind chimes and bamboo flutes ad nauseam.
Unless someone doesn’t mind their home resembling either a 1970’s discotheque or a Chinese knick-knack store, I can’t understand how this would be appealing to most people. In fact, if something looks ugly to a person and they feel forced to decorate in a style they don’t like, that can make a person immediately agitated and eventually suppress the immune system: one definition of bad feng shui.
The last third of the book includes more of the same principles surrounding furniture placement and finally in Chapter 8 she reveals the infamous Black Hat Ba’ gua Map which is a generic symbolic template placed the same way over every floor plan and used to micro-manage a single room and even smaller spaces like the top of a desk (as in, Where should I place my stapler?) This is the most O.C.D. application of Feng Shui and I don’t condone it. The Ba gua Map is a simplified and misguided version of the Luo Shu Square, which spurred legions of women to locate for their imaginary Love and Marriage corner.
Under the chapters titled Ch’i Cultivation and Divination, the book concludes with the Black Hat version of talismanic practices, Taoist blessings, meditations and space clearing techniques. There is also a quickie overview of the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs and honorable mention of other Chinese Arts, such as palm reading and I-Ching divination.
I can’t recommend this book for a variety of reasons, but I forced myself to read many Black Hat offerings decades ago. I felt like I needed to understand what kind of Black Hat misrepresentations I would have to explain to future clients or counter during interviews. Other BTB authors, who published after her, repeated much of the same material and only added more New Age adaptations along with such complementary fields as Organizing, EMF-awareness, Color Psychology, Gem-stone Therapy, Aromatherapy, Interior Decorating, and a host of other loosely-related topics. Even some Chinese authors embraced Black Hat.
As the years passed, my only link with Lin Yun was that he unintentionally provided me with a lucrative platform to teach classical feng shui in response to what he and his followers promoted. Ironically, my sister who had no interest in feng shui, but who practiced Elder Law not far from Lin Yun’s Temple, was hired to administer the probate of his Estate. So, the Diamond sisters both had a funny karmic connection with him.
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Book Review Blog Series
