If you have stumbled upon this review of Eva Wong’s book, Feng Shui-The Ancient Wisdom of Harmonious Living in Modern Times without reading Part 1, please start here:
Continuing……
In a section on Choosing An Orientation In A Given Cycle, Wong once again states that when the land is purchased it creates a flying star chart, ranking second to the actual Construction Period chart. But she fails to tell readers how you establish sitting and facing for an empty piece of land. Wong continues with some bullet points for what kind of changes in a property could justify creating a new geomantic (flying star) chart and which changes would not.
While I agree with her list for what changes will not create a new chart, she has some questionable or vague reasons for when the chart will change. One example is a change in the “room partitions.” I assume here she means moving the walls. This example needs a lot of clarification because moving internal walls will not change the Period of a house. She says that “structural changes” to the building will also create a new chart. Major structural changes, such as doubling the size of the house; yes. But minor structural changes like adding a kitchen island; no.
The author’s next chapter is a real doozy because most classical practitioners will divide into two major camps: the Nine Palace Grid method or the pie shape sector method. Wong presents a style that is neither. In her examples, she lets room size dictate the boundaries of a directional zone in a house and the influence of a set of stars. Let’s say a room is mostly in the northeast sector and that room also has a closet in the east sector. She is fine with believing that the northeast sector stars will take over the entire room, and then the stars in the east can be stuffed entirely into the closet. An adjacent room that literally spans both the east and southeast will only have access to the southeast sector stars because the closet is constricting the east sector stars in that confining smaller space. From my training and experience, the flying stars are not stopped or contained by walls.
She also shows a floor plan on page 206, where it appears that three sectors are missing, only because she does not use the Nine Palace Grid method nor the pie shape sector method. If either popular method was used, the floor plan would reveal only partially missing sectors. Since missing sectors can signal something very deficient for the occupants, this is a big deal. She uses this example to say you should pass on a house with all these missing areas, but that doesn’t help the reader who already lives in that kind of house.
Next Wong discusses each room and area of a house and how the flying stars may influence the activities or purpose of these rooms. It’s no surprise that bad stars in a home office can affect the productivity of that room, whereas bad stars in a kitchen could make a person more accident-prone or undermine the quality of the food. Each room is similar in that the untimely stars can yield something negative, but you finish that section realizing that the bad stars have to go somewhere and that not all rooms will enjoy the positive timely stars or combinations. While she does not overly prioritize which rooms are most important, she does state that if any of these rooms land in the conditional or unconditional sectors (with the He Tu combinations) explained in an earlier chapter, that they take priority.
Let’s go back to one of those examples: She states on page 195 that a 1-6 combination (earth base and facing star) in the east or southeast can yield successful scholarly pursuits and the children will be intelligent and talented. If the 1-6 stars are in the south, there will be injuries or accidents to the head of the family. Why? At this juncture, it would have been helpful to show readers the nuances of Five Element Theory. For instance, south is inherently a “fire” direction and 6 (metal) is dominated by fire. The 6 metal is symbolic of the father, head of the family. This is how we see the conflict of that star in that direction. Less dire, we may instead just see that the man in the house is bald, since energetically the fire (south) burns off the hair on the head (6).
In the section on flying stars and certain rooms, she writes that the 1-6 combination within a hallway or staircase area can predict great wealth and multi-national enterprises. This great benefit would be canceled out if that staircase or hallway was located in the south since it is one of those “conditional” directions.
Students and clients often ask what takes priority with a multitude of converging forces and sometimes everything manifests, the good and the bad together, as opposed to multiple forces nullifying the space into a neutral zone.
Page 211 has a section titled, “Superimposing the Geomantic Chart Onto Each Room.” Without giving more than a couple of examples of the flying star chart over a very rudimentary floor plan sketch, the author suggests superimposing at the “microcosmic level” a miniaturized chart over a single room. She gives an example on the following page. Without the guidelines of either the Nine Palace Grid method nor the pie shape sector method, readers must assume that the stars are evenly distributed throughout the room, without explicit instruction as to when those distributions are not equal.
I am nit-piking about the not-to-scale floor plans because this book was produced by a major publisher. There should have been a budget for good floor plans for ideal learning purposes.
Readers must also assume that each room will take on the same orientation as the whole house. Oddly, she states that numerical combination references pertain “to the Earth Base and Facing Star with no specific designation of ordering.” This is rather nonsensical, especially for someone who departs from the conventional priority of mountain dragon and water dragon pairings. Now we are told that interpretation of stars is interchangeable.
Wong points out that the location of the bed itself is the most important part of the bedroom and I agree with this as bedrooms often span more than one directional zone. But she adds that it is important to include “where you get off the bed.” Without further example, I suppose she means where your feet land when getting out of bed. This is a level of micro-managing which I cannot personally relate to. She proceeds to give the same run down about which stars are ideal for the bedroom, why we don’t like mirrors in a bedroom and even states that with a specific combination of the 7, 2, 9 and 5 stars in a fireplace area it will predict death by fire for the occupant. Yep, I learned about that combination as well. But why is the reader kept in so much suspense in how to correct this combination? (There happens to be more than one way to deal with it as well).
The dire predictions for the bed, the bedroom door, and a possible fireplace make it truly challenging to create a floor plan with only good stars in the priority spaces. What should you do, for example, if the bed lands in a good spot within the house, but not within the room? Which is more important? Of course, the questions are endless for a serious student or practitioner and best left to discuss in the classroom or one-on-one with your teacher. So far, she has not suggested that we take the mountain dragon more seriously if it happens to match the personal gua (trigram) of the occupants using the room. But she gets to another version of that much later.
In a section about the kitchen, Wong predicts horrible outcomes if the 5 star or multiple 5 stars are in this location. It is true that the 5 star is often the hidden hand with regards to accidents and arguments, but it can’t be “extremely dangerous,” in the kitchen because a) the fire element is not present all the time to further aggravate the 5 star and b) with a ton of metal in the kitchen, much of the influence is nullified. Given that many people do very little cooking in current times and given a choice between sleeping in the 5 star or cooking in the 5 star, I would prefer the latter.
Throughout this part of the chapter she refers to “squares,” such as “the location of the desk as well as the square it faces.” I have to assume she is referring to the Nine Palace grid method, where a “square” indicates a certain directional zone. This is not clarified however and nothing in her book so far demonstrates any adherence to the Nine Palace grid method. I used to divide up floor plans with that method and it is not just a matter of creating a “tic-tac-toe” grid over every floor plan. That system has its own rules about when to consider a space as having a missing quadrant (square) or an extension. Without measuring and drawing out these palace boundaries, references to the stars and placement of remedies would be haphazard.
Sprinkled throughout the book, whenever Wong discusses the flying stars, she says the 9 star can contribute to disasters. Now that we are in Period 9 (2024-2043), the 9 star is the major health and wealth star. It does not mean that nothing negative can arise with the 9 star, but this is the BEST time to utilize the positive aspects of the timely 9 star. Like other authors who published in Period 7, this current Period 9 must have seemed like a distant future not worth writing about.
When one has the great fortune to build from scratch using feng shui principles, I agree with her premise that you should strive for a chart that supports health even more than financial success. And yet Wong throws out one piece of advice that is nearly impossible to accommodate:”select a geomantic (flying star) chart that has no “fatal” combinations in any of the Nine Palaces.” Any? This is statistically, numerically impossible. A really great feng shui design caters to the most important areas: bedrooms, home office, common entrances.
Just when I thought she would implore that all the untimely stars land in the bathrooms or utility room, she states that those areas should also not have “fatal” stars. It would have been comforting for the reader to have her interject somewhere before chapter 18 that the beauty of feng shui is in the remedies and adjustments we can make to all these unsavory flying stars.
As we get toward the end of Wong’s book, she includes a chapter on Yearly and Monthly stars, as other authors do as well. In my first book, Feng Shui for Skeptics, I presented the yearly influences even before explaining how to create a flying star chart, which I saved for my third book. I only did things in that order because the annual star is a single digit and floating that one number throughout the directions (always in an ascending pattern) is just simpler for beginner’s to understand and not make mistakes.
To be clear: the annual star in the center descends from year to year and once established, you ASCEND the numbers throughout the same pattern to NW, ending with SE. That said, in an actual school format, it may be wiser to make sure the student understands the process for the flying star chart first, as the foundation, before getting into smaller cycles of time.
Wong writes some confusing things which I need to comment on. She states that while yearly and monthly stars are important enough to learn and calculate, daily and hourly stars should be reserved for the timing of very special circumstances. I agree. However, she instructs readers to consult with the “Tung Shu,” the Chinese almanac for information about good days and hours, for such things as moving into a house or beginning a construction project. This can be confusing because there are Chinese Astrology calendars which dispense generic advice for everyone, but then there are specific flying stars (yearly, monthly, daily, hourly) that exist for your home uniquely. These are two different systems. In other words, you cannot look up in the Tung Shu what the daily star will be in your personal bedroom on a certain day. And on the following page, she builds on the confusion by stating that the New Year begins either on the first day of the Lunar New Year or the “coming of Spring,” whichever comes first!
In feng shui practice, we use the Solar calendar, which always begins on February 3rd, 4th, or 5th. Most of the time it is February 4th, but it can vary by a few hours which sometimes occurs on February 3rd or February 5th. This is the mid-way point between the December Solstice and the March Equinox. It is a completely different calendar than the Lunar calendar, which might differ from the Solar calendar by a few weeks. I recommend using February 4th as your Feng Shui New Year date, regardless of whether the Lunar New Year comes before or after (and it does vacillate from year to year).
Wong states that the last Lower Yun cycle began in 1984 (with the last Period 7). True. But a sentence later she writes that the last lower Yun began in 1996. On the following page there are more mistakes with the Table Chart. The Table Chart lists which ruling star (placed in the center of the chart as the annual star) is for each year. This Table Chart is correct except for the easy-to-detect typos where it lists many years in the 23rd century which should be the 21st century. Typo example: 9 Annual years are listed as 1991, 2000, 2009, 2018 and then when it should be 2027, it says “2227.” You will see “2” where there should be a “0” throughout the chart for years in our current century. Just correct your copy of the book with the annual star each year re-occurring in multiples of 9 years.
Another mistake slipped by Wong or the editors on page 220, with annual charts for 1996 showing the 8 star in the center when it should be a 4 star. The likely reason for this error is that the MONTHLY star in the center palace for February of 1996 was a MONTHLY 8 star, but it’s described as the yearly star. She proceeds to state that the monthly stars change with the monthly lunar cycles and this is not correct either.
The monthly stars also follow the solar calendar, ranging from a start date of the 4th of the month to the 8th of the month when compared to a western calendar. Like the annual stars, the monthly stars descend each year and each month in each direction. For example, if 1990 was a 1 year, then 1991 was a 9 year and 1992 was an 8 year, and 1993 was a 7 year. If any February is an 8 month, then the center star in March is 7 and 6 in April. Once you establish the year or month star in the center, you do ascend them through each direction in the same order of NW, W, NE, S, N, SW, E, SE and back to center. The order of the star number descends in each direction.
Now, because we have 9 stars, the yearly and monthly stars repeat every 9 years and every 9 months. If we have a monthly 7 star in the center palace for the month of March, then 9 months later in December, we will see a monthly 7 star again in the center palace. But in Wong’s book on page 222, she has charts indicating that the monthly stars switch their ascending progression to a descending progression between solstices! Actually, this is only done with DAILY stars, not MONTHLY stars.
In fact, if you go back to her chart on page 219, you see a center column showing the “Ruling star” for the first of the month (February) each year. Go down the column and you will see a pattern of 8, 5, 2, 8, 5, 2, 8, 5, 2. That only happens because the numbers (stars) descend perpetually and do not switch with the solstices. Do the math: We have 12 months in a solar calendar. Notice that the 8-5-2 patterns shows that each year begins with a central monthly star that is three digits less than the previous year. With the example I gave above for a 7 star in the month of March: that means the previous month in February had an 8 star in the center. (That happens in Annual years 1, 7, and 4.)
After following a 12 month succession of Feb (8), March (7), April (6), May (5), June (4), July (3), August (2), September (1), October (9), November (8), December (7), January (6)….we end up with the following year starting with 5 in February, just as her chart shows. This could not happen if you switch the flow of the monthly stars at the solstices. Never mind the fact that the solstices occur during a monthly cycle and not at the beginning or end.
Aside from teaching the incorrect flow of the monthly stars, she gives no examples of how to integrate that information into the permanent flying star chart. Readers should know that this is the kind of material which teachers may spend quite a bit of time explaining to students, with exhaustive examples, to make sure the principles are understood and applied correctly.
Wong then begins another chapter on personal best directions for the occupants. I thought this might be a fairly straight forward chapter, but once again I was surprised by the inconsistencies and some of the author’s random comments.
Chapter 17 is a very short passage about how to determine your personal “gua” or trigram, which she refers to as your “guardian element.” Her Table Charts include a female gua column which I planned to not comment on, since so many other practitioners who I admire still use this Eight Mansion system, where a female is given a different “guardian element” as a male born in the same year. The exception is males and females who are the 3 star.
In this popular Eight Mansion system, if a male ends up being a “5” star, he is relegated to being a 2 (Kun) person and a 5 star female is assigned the 8 (Gen) trigram. This is done because the 5 star represents “center.” It is not a trigram and for this particular branch of Feng Shui, each person needs to be associated with a trigram (and a signature direction).
However, in Wong’s Table Chart, she has both males and females listed as 5 star in different years of birth. This ends up being a mash-up of two different approaches, without identifying them for what they are. In the conventional Eight Mansion (Ba Zhai) School, no one, not male or female is left as a 5 star person. In other systems, like Nine Star Ki, we have 5 star people, but they are not distinguished by being male or female. The 5 star people, male or female, are born in any year when the central annual star is a 5 star. End of story.
As she classifies the groupings of three earth types (2, 5, and 8 star people), then two wood types (3 and 4) and two metal types (6 and 7), she incorrectly refers to 6 Metal as “soft” and 7 Metal as “hardened.” This is the opposite of how the metal stars are perceived by everyone else. The rest of this hasty chapter gives several examples of how to determine personal compatibility with a room or entrance based on the individual’s personal element in comparison with the Earth Base star for that location. For example, if the Earth Base star in a certain area is 2 Earth, she deems the 1 Water person as incompatible with that area (because earth blocks/destroys water).
Here she almost completely ignores the other influences of the flying star chart, including the facing star (water dragon) that had so much emphasis throughout the book. Later she mentions that other stars can mitigate some of these domination cycles. Yet, she ignores the conventional notions from the Eight Mansion School where people are generally regarded as East Group or West Group. Right in this example, she has fused two semi-incompatible schools. In The Eight Mansion School, an element is not going to mitigate an element dispute.
In the chapter on Setting Up Countermeasures and Enhancers, she includes recommendations for both exteriors and interiors, but oddly refers to various objects as “artifacts,” including mirrors and other ordinary items not usually considered “artifacts” in any archeological sense. Her inclusion of using shiny objects (and an effigy of a baseball player with a bat!) to deflect away various external “sha” strikes me as border-line Black Hatty. From her perspective, it might be more in line with talismanic magic.
For the internal environment, she begins by addressing flying stars in an unfavorable location as one dilemma. The suggestion is to add on a covered patio or atrium to “stretch” the geomantic chart over the whole, extended floor plan, as if this will force the resident flying stars to shift into another newly added room. While this can happen with a solid room addition, it’s doubtful that it can work with a covered patio. She also states that by “removing some parts of the house,” the malevolent stars will fall “outside the building.” This defies her own notions about shrinking a sector down to a smaller adjacent room. Wong also suggests that changing an entrance location or internal walls may also change the Period of a house, in hopes of creating a more favorable flying star chart.
Wong has an unwarranted concern over fireplaces, ovens and stoves, for the fire hazard they may pose. She recommends water, real or virtual displays as a counter-measure. Meanwhile, we learn in Five Element Theory that if water is paired with fire, it creates a Domination cycle, which has its own side effects. Wong then proceeds to give elemental recommendations for certain flying star combinations, such as using a metal chiming clock or metal wind chimes to address the 2-5 combination. Heavy metal or a chiming clock I would agree with, but the 6-rod metal wind chime in particular, (with the 2-5 combination) can attract a ghost.
As Wong continues to explain the reasons for using either the Productive, Reductive, or Dominating element, it reminds me that nowhere in the book does she give a concise run down of the current meanings of the individual stars. Instead, she has given meaning to pairs of stars, which can have their own combined alchemy. Without a check list for the individual stars, I wonder how a new student can decide what remedial element to use, when they may not understand which element is the problem.
For example, if we tell readers that a 1-3 combination could cause legal problems, how are they to know which star is the cause? If you don’t know which star is doing what, then it makes it difficult to know which reductive element to use. From her lists, it is only clear that the 5 star is a major troublemaker, without knowing individually the various influences of the other stars as stand-alone energies. This information would have been helpful also for how to handle the single annual star in any given location.
Wong writes “to counter the threat of metal, you can use its antagonist, fire.” Earlier, she forewarns readers that if you use the dominating element, you have to be careful as it could backfire if not enough of the element is used. For liability’s sake, I would emphasize the safer Reductive element outside of the classroom, since the casual reader has no idea of proportion, what is too much or too little at this point.
Wong references back to her section on compatibility with a room, based on an occupant’s personal element in relation to the Earth Base star. In cases of incompatibility, she recommends the reductive element to nullify the influence. She also states you can strengthen the individual by adding an element which nurtures their personal star (trigram). This all sounds very familiar, as recommended by another author named T. Raphael Simons.
This is where generic advice gets very tricky. For example: Let’s say a 4 Wood star person concludes that they should add water to their bedroom based on that advice, to support them personally (Water nurtures Wood). What if that room also hosts a 3 wood star? Adding water could support an individual, but at the risk of enhancing the negative attributes of the 3 star. The more contradictory information an author dispenses, the more they need to give examples of how to prioritize, along with disclaimers like, “Kids, don’t try this at home.”
In a closing chapter, Wong includes “special objects” as countermeasures, such as the infamous Ba’gua mirror and talismanic door guardian depictions. Nowhere in the book does Eva Wong try to convince the reader that feng shui is a natural science by any Western standard, nor does she rebuff any speculation that feng shui is laden with superstition. She has a right to present these “special objects,” especially as a practicing Taoist and her own style of “cures.” I just happen to think these are limited examples, compared to other less conspicuous resources.
She closes with commentary about the good or bad karma of a building and the residual effect it can have on future occupants. She states that the residual karma of a space can increase or lessen the inherent feng shui impact of the house or building. She describes what has been written by others as the Predecessor Law and how it is important to find out who lived in your house before you or what transpired, when possible.
If the past occupants had a difficult time, a tragedy or remnants of spirit activity, you can also “sweep the karma,” or the more popular term “space clear” the area. This can be done by any individual with sincere intent and protocols like sage burning. She also recommends the services of a Taoist or Buddhist priest or shamanic healer from any tradition to assist in the clearing and blessing ceremonies. Catholic priests might call it an “exorcism,” but it doesn’t have to be such a dire situation, to enlist the help of those who deal regularly with the spirit world or non-physical realms.
As the book concludes, Wong finishes with a thoughtful essay, An Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times, which is hard to paraphrase succinctly, except to say that Earth is our home, and not just a random collection of animate and inanimate objects. Rather, Earth has been described by others as “Gaia,” a cosmic sentient Mothership in her own right. Through feng shui observation and practices, as well as many other universal traditions and beliefs, we can understand ourselves and others more completely, with added harmony and grace. All it takes is the will to do so.
In spite of what I found faulty with this book, there is still an impressive amount of good information; the most special and unique part of it is the delivery of Eva Wong’s own life experiences.
Summary:
Eva Wong’s book is densely packed with information, some of which I soundly agree with and have incorporated in my own practice and teaching materials. The areas where she diverges from most other practitioners, is in her emphasis in prioritizing and treating the “Earth Base” star with the water dragon, while almost ignoring the mountain dragon.
Theoretically, all the stars should be considered, but there is a hierarchy and Wong stands apart from other consultants who place the emphasis on how the mountain dragon and water dragon influence each other, more so than the Earth Base (Period star). Of course, with Special House Types like Fu Mu San Gua, we have to include the Period Star just to recognize the House type.
Wong also separates her style from others in that she does not appear to use either the Nine Palace Grid method nor the pie-shape sector method to divide up floor plans, as a way to designate the directional zones. Instead, she lets the walls distinguish the areas, which does not follow any other set format, such as where to establish a boundary in one big open space. Co-mingling stars from other sectors is a whole other consideration for another time.
Feng Shui-The Ancient Wisdom of Harmonious Living for Modern Times provides a thorough list of examples when it comes to Form School principles, but it comes with a convoluted introduction to the Flying Stars and unfortunately quite a few typos and errors. The first time I read her book was on an airplane. If I did not already practice Feng Shui, I might have been overwhelmed with her presentation. Reading it again twenty+ years later, I find that I appreciate some parts of it even more, but certain errors I found alarming.
Mystified by the big mistakes, I wonder if her follow-up, A Master’s Course, was an attempt to make those corrections. Eventually I will review that book and see if that is the case. My recommendation for this book is therefore conditional. I think the seasoned practitioner or advanced student who is confident in creating a flying star chart can still get some good Form School information out of this book and not dwell on the mistakes made in the Flying Star sections.
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Book Review Blog Series
