The History of FengShui

The origin of FengShui 風水 can be attributed to two major factors: Factor One is in the early days of Ancient Chinese Civilization, when people sought shelter in caves; and Factor Two is at a later stage, when people began to form groups, such as tribes and clans, and with it tribal or clan villages, followed by larger groups of people living in towns and even much larger groups of people living in cities.

Ancient natural FengShui can be attributed to the Neolithic Beijing Man and their counterparts in various Neolithic settlements all over Prehistoric China. They were people of an ancient civilization, who sought shelter in caves to escape from the forces of nature. They had, by then, the basic knowledge and feeling of comfort and wellbeing, and how to find and experience it by making use of the environment around them. It was just basic human instinct to seek comfort and to abhor adversity.

Later stage ancient FengShui, which was the catalyst for accumulating the vast contemporary FengShui knowledge, now can be attributed to tribal and clan groups. Their needs became more complicated than their more ancient counterparts, they began to seek more comfort, and they needed more resources to build comfortable lives around themselves. Not only that, they needed to find newer and better ways to overcome the forces of Nature for their own comfort. With that, they developed specialized knowledge to make use of the Land and Water around them.

All early civilizations lived by the Mountains and the Rivers. Land and Water was a source of life and so was Sunlight. So, as ancient Chinese civilization evolved, they developed the knowledge to harness all these: Land, Water and Sunlight, for their own benefit. Their knowledge increased and became more powerful, they found that there is such a thing as Qi. This was the Birth of Chinese FengShui.

The earliest recorded Neolithic culture of China was the PengTou Shan culture (彭頭山文化 7500 BC - 6100 BC). But the earliest evidence of FengShui practice was found much later, around 5000 BC called the YangShao (仰韶文化) culture (5000 BC – 3000 BC) and HongShan (红山文化) culture (4700 BC – 2900 BC).

Archeological finds in the BanPo village near Xian, and another place called JiangZhai, both of which existed during the YangShao era, revealed the Ancient’s ingenuity for harnessing Water. These two settlements were found to be surrounded by ring ditches. 

Any ordinary person will know that water is the source of Life, but few would know that it is more than that. Water is also a carrier of Qi. We shall elaborate on this subject in a later chapter.

Early Development of FengShui

The evidence that the Ancient Chinese had already been using Astronomy as a guide to build their homes was found in the BanPo and JiangZhai sites. The dwellings were found to be astronomically aligned so that they could absorb maximum solar energy to warm the houses during the cold months. It was found they had used the Pole Star as a guide to determine North South alignment.Other evidence of Ancient Chinese using FengShui came from archeological findings of a grave at PuYang that was proven by Radio Carbon tests to be about 5000 years old. In it, scientists found drawings of the Dragon, Tiger and BeiDou (北斗 Big Dipper) star formations, and the grave was also aligned along the North South axis. Other evidence of Ancients practicing FengShui was from a piece of jade dug up in HanShan (circa 3000 BC) that had engraved in it a Cosmography that looked similar to the markings on a FengShui LuoPan. A prominent Chinese archeologist, Li XueQin, linked this piece of jade to the ShiPan (六任 LiuRen astrolabe), the modern day compass and the FengShui LuoPan 羅盤. The LiuRen astrolabe is believed to be the oldest resemblance to the present day LuoPan. There have been archeological finds of these ShiPan (LiuRen 六任 astrolabes) from graves that dated back to between 200 BC to 280BC.

Other historical evidence of FengShui application came from excavated artifacts of the the Shang Dynasty (商朝) or Yin Dynasty (殷代) (ca. 1600 - 1046 BC) as it was sometimes called. It was the first historic Chinese dynasty that ruled in the northeastern region of the area known as ZhongYuan or Central Plains in the Yellow River valley.

The excavated artifacts included oracle bones, turtle shells, cattle scapula or other bones on which were inscribed what was to be the first evidence of the birth of written Chinese. The oracle bone inscriptions were found to be characters describing the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches of the Sexagenary cycle of 60 JiaZi 甲子, the basis of Chinese Time calculation. Contemporary Chinese Culture had its roots beginning in this era.

In those days, FengShui and Divination had already found the intimate and inseparable relation between Heaven, the Earth and Man. The ancients had already developed their own knowledge of Astronomy and had used this knowledge, to find and analyze the correlation between the Stars (Heaven) and Earth and its effects on Man.The Zhou Dynasty 周朝 (1122 BC to 256 BC), was another period in Chinese History that saw the development of FengShui and other Metaphysics go up another level. During this time, Chinese Philosophy and Metaphysics matured and developed to greater heights. There were such great names living then; Confucius (founder of Confucianism), LaoZi (founder of Daoism), and MengZi (a student of Confucius, who brought Confucianism to greater heights). The Zhou Kingdom was said to exist side by side with the Shang Dynasty, and some historians said that the son of King Wen of Zhou toppled the Shang Dynasty. King Wen of Zhou was accredited with the founding of the Later Heaven BaGua, also called Wen Huang BaGua. It was also during this era that FengShui flourished, and began to have different philosophical and Metaphysical inputs.

Excerpted from Chapter 2 of my book Chinese Metaphysics: Essential FengShui Basics