FengShui Schools

In this chapter, I shall discuss on the different schools of FengShui to help the reader get a good grasp of different types of FengShui methods currently being practiced. Ever since KanYu or FengShui was developed by the Ancient Sages it has evolved into many different schools of thoughts (called ‘Pai’ 派 in Chinese). 

The evolvement of all these different schools was supposedly in tandem with the philosophical, social and economic development (of China). As the Chinese society evolved and people’s knowledge expanded, so, too, did FengShui evolve and expand. 

In the early days before the invention of the compass needle, all KanYu directional analysis were done by visual sighting of the Pole Star (Polaris) to mark the geographic North, and thus determine the other Cardinal directions.

They had also made observations of the BeiDou constellation 北斗星 (Big Dipper or Ursa Major) to learn about the seasons. The Ancients, after many years of observations of the BeiDou constellation’s ‘rotation,’ had already collected enough data to accurately tell seasonal changes.

These early KanYu Masters were all expert astronomers, who were able to incorporate planetary influences into KanYu analysis. These planetary influences are in fact the fundamentals of LiQi FengShui 理氣风水.

They had also developed the expertise to judge correctly the auspiciousness or inauspiciousness of terrain and topographical features (mountains and rivers). These Landform observations and gathering of data became the forerunner of present day Landform FengShui, popularly called Form FengShui. The actual term is XingShi FengShui 形勢风水.

Later developments in FengShui saw many new developments, especially in the incorporation of the theory of the YiJing and the 64 Hexagrams into FengShui analysis. These are also part of the LiQi factor.

The evolution of FengShui, especially after GuoPu, who wrote the authoritative ZangShu, and a later day adherent (of GuoPu’s theories) Yang JunSong, accelerated until today, where there are so many different FengShui schools of thought – some purely sticking to one form of FengShui and some incorporating everything and anything that they think can work.

Major FengShui Schools (Pais)

Today’s contemporary FengShui schools can be broadly categorized into two major ones:

1.  XingShi Pai 形勢派 (Terrain or Topographic School), commonly called Form School.

2.  LiQi Pai 理氣派 (Qi Management), commonly called Compass School.

The commonly known names – Form School and Compass School are Western influenced nomenclatures. I do not really agree with the definition of ‘Compass School’ to describe the LiQi Pai category.

The reason is everybody practicing FengShui, irrespective of school, would need to use the compass or LuoPan to find and determine the direction of the different topographical features in relation to the sitting and facing of the building to be analyzed. Therefore, the representation of the LiQi Pai as Compass School is a bit misleading, because it connotes that the Form School does not use the compass at all. The XingShi Pai does use the LuoPan (compass) to determine the direction of topographical features in relation to the site to be audited.

There are people arguing that in the Form School you don’t really need to use a LuoPan to judge direction. Therefore the Compass School nomenclature for LiQi Pai is valid. Yes and No. Forms or Topographical features only constitute half of the FengShui equation. One can never have a complete picture of the FengShui situation of a site without using the two methods, XingShi and LiQi, together.

Sub-Categorizations

Under XingShi Pai 形勢派 there are three sub-categories:

1. LuanTou Pai   巒頭派

2.  XingXiang Pai  形象派 

3.  XingFa Pai   形法派

Under LiQi Pai 理氣派, broadly, there should be two major sub-categories and many sub-sub-categories. The two major sub-categories are:

1. SanHe Pai   三合派

2.  SanYuan Pai  三元派

SanHe Pai is more inclined towards environmental analysis, much like the XingShi Pai. The word SanHe comes from the 5 Elements NaJia theory of the tri-combination of Earthly Branches of the same Qi. For example the combination of Hai-Mao-Wei 亥卯未 forms the Wood Element; Yin-Wu-Xu 寅 午 戌 forms the Fire Element; Si-You-Chou 巳酉丑forms the Metal Element and lastly Shen-Zi-Chen 申子辰 forms the Water Element.

The SanHe Pai, other than using the NaJia 纳甲 theory, also uses the NaYin theory of the 60 JiaZi Dragons 甲子龙 and a host of other theories, too many to describe here and it is out of the scope of this book. All these will be discussed in another book in the future.

Excerpted from Chapter 12 of my book Chinese Metaphysics: Essential FengShui Basics