History of Feng Shui

Feng Shui has a several thousand year history. It started from observing the nature (environment). Ancient masters studied not to bother the Dragons – not to destroy hills and mountains. One of the most important thing is living in harmony with the nature and not destroying it.

First Feng Shui masters observed the hills and mountains, lakes and rivers and classified them as different types of mountains and water. The nature forms were classified as yin and yang, as one of the five elements, as favorable and unfavorable. And the so called Form School came into existence. The Earth aspect of feng shui was taken into account.

Later the time aspect of Feng Shui was invented. The Chinese philosophy tells that time moves in a cyclic sequence. This is not similar to our western view on the time. We think about time as something linear. But according to the Chinese view time has a cyclic pattern and the events will repeat somewhere at a new convolution. And so we can predict some events in the future which will occur at a new time convolution.

At this stage the so called Compass School came into existence. This school took into account the time aspect of assessed place or in other words the Heaven aspect.
Compass which is used to determine the geographic direction was invented in China about 8th century AD.

Actually both aspects - the Heaven and Earth - must be taken into consideration to assess the dwelling.

In old times feng shui was called Kan Yu. This name reflects the essence of this study better because the word “Kan” means the time aspect and the word “Yu” means the geographical aspect of this study.

In the reigning of Tang dynasty (618-907) this study was wide-spread. There were approximately one hundred schools but most of them didn’t teach true knowledge.

At the end of Qing dynasty reigning (1644-1912) the name “Feng Shui” (Wind and Water) was invented and now it is widely known.

Despite of the new name the meaning of this study is the same – assess the time and geographical aspect of a dwelling for determining the possibility to live in harmony with our home and environments.