-RRH-

I'm hoping someone can give me a quick rundown of what beliefs are actually involved in feng shui. It's tricky to find this info, because most sites on feng shui are just trying to sell a product, and those that are just trying to inform still usually have an agenda. I would love something like what religioustolerance.org does to summarize a religion and the major sects within, but religioustolerance.org does not have a feng shui page.

Any suggestions for a no-nonsense source of info on the practice of feng shui?

Seeker196

It's a fairly innocuous Chinese 'geomancy' idea, like Astrology.

You pay the Feng Shui dude to come when you are building or renovating and he 'aligns' your house.

At it's worst, it is simply a scam to bilk doofus out of some money with soothing tone of voice and some sweet smelling mystical BS, at it's best it is simply a bunch of 'lucky' aesthetic principles.

Some of the principles:
'Luck' in geomancy is like an invisible physical substance with fluid and liquid properties. Good luck flows from certain directions and is concentrated by certain geological feature (lucky mountains, unlucky bogs, that sort of thing).

One of the principles of Feng Shui design is to not have doors and windows facing in an unlucky direction (south I believe). The Feng Shui dude will try to make the dwelling so that good luck flows in and bad fortune flows out.

Imagine someone who designs a good air conditioning/heating system for a custom home, except in this case the 'air' is invisible and pink.

Feng Shui in it's modern form is somewhat watered-down, it probably originally involved the exorcism of spirits.

[ May 22, 2002: Message edited by: Seeker196 ]</p>

-RRH-

I've got that. What sort of things will direct the flow of our invisible pink fluid?

There is also the Ba Gua, which is those squares that you can overlay the room, where each corner represents a certain aspect of your life. Are there different schools of Feng Shui?

Hail_Isis

Furniture placement and placement of certain objects in a room directs the stuff, according to what I've studied. Like, it comes in through windows so you shouldn't put furniture under them, and you shouldn't have two mirrors facing each other because it reflects it all over the place. I don't quite remember a lot of it, though. It was a long time ago.

When I was working in the Girl Scouts we were going to show the girls some Feng Shui and the Christian parents got all pissed It was hilarious.

Zack

Feng Shui is when somebody rearranges the contents of your wallet.
(Thanks to Penn and Teller)