Most Western ideas about feng shui are utterly wrong and generally based on a variety of weird concepts pulled from European folklore and New Age marketing -- which are in turn marketed as '"contemporary and practical'" feng shui. The marketing is largely targeted to spiritual seekers. These people are subconsciously trying to assuage their environmental guilt with a system that actually increases their exploitation of the environment.
According to Ho Lynns article in the execrable Feng Shui Anthology (published and edited by Jami Lin), this new Bagua was created by self-proclaimed '"wandering impostor'" Thomas Lin Yun, founder and spiritual leader of an American church called Black Sect Tibetan Buddhism. The new bagua is marketed as a '"revolutionary'" and '"innovative'" step in Chinese philosophy. In fact, it is so '"revolutionary'" that Asians think it is a joke. Thats why it is popular in the West and not in Asia.
As one Korean-American practitioner of martial and healing arts said,
Another bizarre theory promoted by the church is calling Kan, Gun, Qian, and Li yin guas because they dont look any different when you flip them on their heads. Yang guas are those trigrams that do look different when theyre flipped. Flipping a trigram like a burger is a unique approach -- certainly one reason to call this stunt '"innovative'" in BTB marketing materials and articles.
When you compare the Luoshu bagua of Daoism with the Luoshu developed by Lin Yun you see the rich diversity of material in the original. The New Age bagua stipulates that people enter their homes in the sectors for Skills/Knowledge, Career, or Travel/Helpful people. Daoism assigns different interpretations to those sectors, and people enter their homes based on the actual location of the door as it relates to compass readings.
Because the Hetu bagua is not used in the New Age versions of feng shui, it is largely ignored by the New Age crowd because they do not know what it is or does. They think it is not used in feng shui although it is.
These "experts" do not agree on a definition of feng shui because theirs does not require precision or consistency. They are encouraged to invent their own concepts, methods, and names -- Neo feng shui, Pyramid feng shui, etc.
You may notice that people who promote the New Age version are knowledgeable about marketing New Age ideas and western occult lore but not so knowledgeable about modern business methods or science -- and they rely on the techniques of the con artist. Call this product McFengshui.
Here are some typical examples.
Whitehurst has limited her vision of feng shui to her feeble range of science knowledge. This limitation affects most McFengshui enthusiasts -- they have no effective responses to people with better information, or a science education.
Collins seems unaware that what she calls "form school" (San He) uses a compass.
This version of McFengshui
The marketers of Neo feng shui arent certain whether traditional feng shui is a philosophy, tradition, cultural influence, or a religious belief. They just need to deny its validity to promote their business. Although just a fancy version of interior decorating, Neo Feng Shui requires that you swallow a lot of propaganda. It is likely to be using the Placebo Effect.
If people who use feng shui are in '"perfect harmony'" with nature, why is global warming speeding up?Despite all of the consumer-trade books and websites claiming one thing or another, the theoretical depth and full potential of the authentic material remain virtually unknown to the public.
Theory
For Black Sect Buddhists and other New Age types, their Bagua (or Ba Gua, Ba Qua, Pa Kua) is a so-called '"mystical octagon of symbolic correlations,'" This cafeteria-style approach to borrowed ideas was whipped into a lovely froth from Western cultural icons and concepts. The new bagua supposedly represents '"eight fundamental life conditions'" that correlate to '"a different aspect of ourselves.'" Yet it was created within the last thirty years and marketed entirely to New Agers ignorant of Asian culture.According to Ho Lynns article in the execrable Feng Shui Anthology (published and edited by Jami Lin), this new Bagua was created by self-proclaimed '"wandering impostor'" Thomas Lin Yun, founder and spiritual leader of an American church called Black Sect Tibetan Buddhism. The new bagua is marketed as a '"revolutionary'" and '"innovative'" step in Chinese philosophy. In fact, it is so '"revolutionary'" that Asians think it is a joke. Thats why it is popular in the West and not in Asia.
As one Korean-American practitioner of martial and healing arts said,
This is the sort of thing that Asians would use to make money off non-Asians.The theories are labeled '"Mutationist'" for good reason. According to the Feng Shui Anthology, Lin Yun took the Taiji (the Primordial, Great Unity or '"Yin Yang symbol,'" as everyone calls it) and set it spinning in its opposite direction. The Taiji and its corresponding systems move clockwise. A left-spinning Taiji -- that is, one spinning counterclockwise -- correlates with global cultures views of aberrant behavior, misfortune, and necromancy.
All those occultists … who are brimming with claims about the strange and the marvelous … those occultists cheat people and delude the masses. They hold in their grasp the black arts and in their embrace all manner of false and faked means. … if one listens to what they say, it fills the ears to overflowing. But one should seek to take hold of what might actually be found, in the end one will have gained nothing, for it is an evasive thing, akin to binding the wind or clutching a shadow.Left (lyft: '"weak,'" '"worthless'" in Old English) still retains its primordial associations with antisocial behavior and disaster, the concept of sinister ('"left hand,'" '"unlucky side'"), in Sanskrit sauvastika ('"all is evil,'" movement which upsets the whole of nature). The Tibetan Bon religion uses symbols flowing counterclockwise to indicate black magic and opposition to Buddhism. A movement withershins ('"against-direction'"), nirrita, or cartua-sul traditionally begins and ends in irreverence, heterodoxy, perversity, death, infertility, and black arts.
— Gao Yong, an esoteric master (Fang Shi) and advisor to Emperor Zheng (33 to 7 BCE)
Another bizarre theory promoted by the church is calling Kan, Gun, Qian, and Li yin guas because they dont look any different when you flip them on their heads. Yang guas are those trigrams that do look different when theyre flipped. Flipping a trigram like a burger is a unique approach -- certainly one reason to call this stunt '"innovative'" in BTB marketing materials and articles.
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| Luoshu Bagua according to Daoism |
When you compare the Luoshu bagua of Daoism with the Luoshu developed by Lin Yun you see the rich diversity of material in the original. The New Age bagua stipulates that people enter their homes in the sectors for Skills/Knowledge, Career, or Travel/Helpful people. Daoism assigns different interpretations to those sectors, and people enter their homes based on the actual location of the door as it relates to compass readings.
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| Lin Yun version of Luoshu Bagua |
McFengshui
Knowing the telltale direction indicators and code words makes it easy to spot BTB ideas. You can do this even when the ideas have been repurposed to suit the ideologies of each new book by yet another self-proclaimed "Feng Shui master." Proponents share one anothers ideas and emphasize various New Age fads, folklore, mythologies, and psychobabble.These "experts" do not agree on a definition of feng shui because theirs does not require precision or consistency. They are encouraged to invent their own concepts, methods, and names -- Neo feng shui, Pyramid feng shui, etc.
You may notice that people who promote the New Age version are knowledgeable about marketing New Age ideas and western occult lore but not so knowledgeable about modern business methods or science -- and they rely on the techniques of the con artist. Call this product McFengshui.
Here are some typical examples.
Janice Ash
Ash says feng shui isA technique that organizes and arranges furniture and decorative items making it easier to achieve goals, prosper, and feel more energetic.Before the invention of McFengshui this was called good housekeeping.
Ellen Whitehurst
Ellen Whitehurst defines feng shui as some sort of object-relations psychology -- ironic, considerng the pathological narcissism at the heart of McFengshui:whatever you put all around your external environment, whether that means your home or office or even your car, has an impact, an influence, a profound psychological effect on everything that then goes on inside of you.If you suffer from abulia, associative agnosia or Capgrass Syndrome how does her version of feng shui work?
Whitehurst has limited her vision of feng shui to her feeble range of science knowledge. This limitation affects most McFengshui enthusiasts -- they have no effective responses to people with better information, or a science education.
Terah Kathryn Collins
Terah Kathryn Collins trademarked her version of feng shui, which she markets as honoring '"the essence of its Eastern Form School Feng Shui heritage, while focusing on the practical applications it has in our Western culture.'" Look up the word essence and you wonder: does she mean an immaterial spirit, a derived substance, or the invariable nature of the subject? It does not matter: this is marketing.Collins seems unaware that what she calls "form school" (San He) uses a compass.
Neo feng shui
Allegedly developed in Denmark, Neo feng shui is another version of McFengshui interior decorating. The lack of education on China and authentic feng shui means what is marketed is truly ignorant -- and in some cases, racist. But all the marketer needs is someone who is more ignorant than they are, and a sale is possible.This version of McFengshui
has taken the essence and basic principles from the old wisdom and removed all layers of religious belief, superstition, cultural influence, traditions, etc. resulting in a Feng Shui philosophy best suited to the twenty first century thought model.In other words, they removed everything but the words '"feng shui'" to market their business. This is similar to marketing a car repair shop as a '"feng shui car repair'" because the words feng shui are in the name, the business uses red decor, and there is a bamboo plant in the logo and a wind chime hanging in the waiting room.
The marketers of Neo feng shui arent certain whether traditional feng shui is a philosophy, tradition, cultural influence, or a religious belief. They just need to deny its validity to promote their business. Although just a fancy version of interior decorating, Neo Feng Shui requires that you swallow a lot of propaganda. It is likely to be using the Placebo Effect.
Denial is Not Just a River
It is no coincidence that McFengshui does not acknowledge global warming or have a response beyond "buy more stuff" (green cleaning products and '"chi enhancers'") while the practitioner learns how to fleece people using building biology (bau-biologie). McFengshui is stuck in the 19th century, talking about life force and auras and reeking of colonialism.Real feng shui does not exist to arrange the environment for our personal gain -- that is what got us into our environmental mess! Feng shui exists to fit us within the environment. By doing that feng shui keeps us safe and healthy. That is why feng shui can be used to combat global warming and environmental disaster.
Which Authors & Consultants Promote BTB Church Ideas of Feng Shui?
- Dennis Fairchild
- William Spear and his student Simon Brown
- Seann Xenja (formerly known as Thomas Howse)
- Susan Levitt
- Elizabeth Chamberlain
- Kathryn Terah Collins
- Claire Plaister
- Eternal Sunshine, Inc. ('"The Spiritual Feng Shui'")
- Ken Lauher
- Taylor Vance
- Connie Spruill
- Mette Keating and Neo-Feng Shui
- Chriss Barr
- Mary K. Stewart
- Ann Bingley Gallops
- Gabrielle Alizay
- Lynne D. Greene (Feng Shui Eyes)
- Heather I. Melcer
- Janet Mayfield
- Robyn Bentley
- Carol/Carole Swann/Meltzer and her various manifestations
- Dr Joe Vitale
- Carole Hyder/Carole J. Hyder
- Karen Ferraro
- Shelley Frances Deegan
- Cathleen McCandless
- Melani Lewandowski
- Sharon Stasney
- MaryAnn Russell
- Janice Ash, who is actually more of a cleaning lady because of her obsession with clutter
- Leigh Kubin
- Alexandra Viragh and Feng Shui Occidental
- Lois Archambault
- Patricia Montouchet
- Katherine Metz
- Nancilee Wydra, who developed a school of her own and some unique concepts
- Ellen Whitehurst, who cooked up a chimera of Western astrology and McFengshui she calls shuistrology
- Angel Thompson
- Susan Hilton, former CPA promoting '"feng shui of abundance'"
- Kathleen Tumpane
- Gabrielle Alizay
- Nancy Santo Pietro
- David Daniel Kennedy
- Maia Martin and her various incarnations
- Carol Bridges
- Eric Shaffert
- Melanie Stokes (Intuitive Living)
- Alexandra Shaw
- Peter David Reiss
- Jean E. Bloomfield
- Inga Chandler, with a resume that indicates she is a professional "seeker"
- Linda Binns and the Feng Shui Success Institute
- Karen Rauch Carter
- Maxine Shapiro
- Jayme Barrett
- Cynde Meyer
- Lisa Sullender
- Stanley Bartlett
- Karen Kingston
- Tom Bender, who hasn't got a clue but mixes it up with the dual frauds of geopathic stress and bau-biology
- Helen and James Jay
- Cheryl Taylor Bowie, with her flower arranging school of feng shui seika
- Ralph and Lahni DeAmicis, who invented something more sinister
- Sheila Wright
- Mary Layne
- Carol Olmstead/Carol M. Olmstead and "Feng Shui for Real Life"
- Pat Heydlauff
- Barry Gordon
- Tony Cuneo and Candace Czarny (Wind & Water, ArtofPlacement.com)
- Kirsten Lagatree
- Richard Webster
- Pam Kai Tollefson
- T. Raphael Simons
- Steven Post
- Gina Lazenby, who endorses geopathic stress and bau-biology
- Jessica Eckstein
- Kathryn Weber, who seems to relate feng shui to good housekeeping
- R.D. Chin
- Donna Stellhorn
- Lillian Too
- Robin Lennon
- Angie Ma Wong (in her own pastiche)
- Jami Lin
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