Feng Shui in China!

When Nanjing University collaborated with a government agency to offer training in the 3,000-year-old practice of the science of geomancy, popularly called Feng Shui (pronounced Fung Shway) it triggered a hostile response. The pressure has been so much that that Nanjing University has decided to disassociate itself from the course.

Ironically, it is happening in China, the very land where Feng Shui originated. I look at the whole issue in a different perspective. I suspect that the very same powers are privately consulting the Feng Shui masters.
Over the years various regimes have banned or tried banning astrology, palmistry, fortune telling, gypsy fortune telling, tarot, hypnotism, Feng Shui, magical practices and other divining methods since 58 BC in Rome, when astrology was banned and astrologers had to flee the city.

The rulers have resented astrologers as they could even predict the death of an emperor and suggest an opponent of the Emperor as his successor, as they sometimes, did.

Adolf Hitler banned all `fortune telling`, making even the publication of almanacs, astrological journals and even weekly forecast columns illegal. Yet, he had a personal astrologer, Karl Ernst Krafft (1900-45). Krafft was born in Switzerland, of German descent, and became a very competent astrologer. Krafft was persuaded to tell the people that government by the Nazis was in the natural order of things. And Krafft even made a claim that he had discovered verses predicting the invasion of Holland and Belgium, and that he foresaw the Third Reich and the Second World War! Even in Bengal, an Indian state ruled by a Communist government, efforts have been made to ban astrology, Feng Shui and `fortune telling`.

I have had Indian (and even a couple of English) politicians consulting me and yet urging me to keep their success stories under wraps. The communists in Russia too banned astrology, occultism, magical practices and all sort of divination. Religion for them was the Number One Enemy, and they described it `the conspiracy of the capitalists`. The communists in China did the very same thing. Chairman Mao Tse-tung banned Feng Shui during the infamous `Cultural Revolution`. Ironically, Chinag Ch’ing, famous for her role in Ibsen’s Doll’s House, who was to become his wife later, was a believer in Feng Shui and astrology. When she showed her palm to a Feng Shui master she was told that she would be an empress! Two other predictions were that she would be jailed and that she would commit suicide. All three predictions turned out to be correct. Yet, Mao banned Feng Shui.

The ancient Chinese texts, written on bones over 8000 years back, are reported to contain assumptions and readings about natural causes and effects and these have become the basis that grew into Feng Shui. Classical Feng Shui, in ancient China, was a closely guarded tool to ensure the health, wealth, and power of the Imperial dynasties. The keepers of this secret knowledge were the Feng Shui masters, the highly respected scientists and astronomers who had the responsibility of sustaining the good fortune, prosperity and more important, the power of the royal court. These masters of Chinese geomancy were very selective of their students and extremely wary of sharing their Feng Shui knowledge with any outsider. As a result, only a few masters could practice the art correctly.

The royal Masters, honoured by the Emperor who would bestow generous gifts on them, remained loyal and exclusive to their ruler. The written text that documented the natural phenomenon and the impact of Feng Shui too, were not meant for the common man. Most of the text, written in metaphors, about mountain, dragons and killing winds was beyond the common man. Feng Shui was exclusive for the Emperor and his dynasty, used to retain their power and wealth.

Feng Shui reached the common man during a rebellion in Tang Dynasty (619-907 AD) when the Prime Minister of China, Young Kwun Chung, had to escape the King’s wrath. According to a reference in the Yin Yang Tian Gi Shu (the book of Yin Yang Celestial Poles) written by Wu Jin Luan, a Chinese Feng Shui Master of the Song Dynasty, "The first Emperor of the Tang Dynasty had, Tang Xuan-Zong had in his collection, a valuable treatise on Feng Shui calculations called the Secret Book of Jade Latters (Yu Han Bi Shu) written by a famous Feng Shui mathematician called Chiu Yen-Han. A court official named Yang Jun-Song, loyal to the rebel Prime Minister, took the one and only copy from the Imperial library and hid it in the place of his birth, Jinagxi province.

The repression and tyranny of Mao and his wife Chiang Ch’ing ended in 1991 when the rule of the `gang of four` ended with Mao’s death, the suicide of his wife and the imprisonment of his close aides. The jubilation in China was so widespread that on the day of Chiang Ch’ing’s arrest every shop selling liquor sold out! During the ban even as Feng Shui went underground in China, its popularity grew. What was earlier the preserve of the select few is now available to the common man. But the elite do not want it.