# Feng shui Source: https://spiritfold.com/Feng_shui Published by the Australian Spiritual Alliance on Spiritfold, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. **Feng shui** (literally "wind-water") is a Chinese tradition for siting and arranging buildings, especially houses and tombs. It rests on the idea that currents of vital energy in the earth affect people's lives, and so must be taken into account when a building is designed, placed and orientated.[1] In English it has also been called geomancy, a term nineteenth-century writers used to translate it.[2] ## Description ### Key terms - ***Qi*** (also written *ch'i*) is the invisible current of energy, or vital breath, that feng shui seeks to work with.[3][4] - **Geomancy** is the older English word that 19th-century writers used to translate feng shui.[2] - ***Yin* and *yang*** and the **five elements** are wider Chinese cosmological ideas that practitioners also take into account.[5] ### Qi and the landscape Feng shui rests on the belief that dwellings can be placed to take advantage of invisible currents of energy within the earth, called *qi* (*ch'i*). In this view the human body is a small-scale model of the earth, and the "dragon veins" of the land correspond to the body's blood vessels; breaking the ground for a well, a house or a tomb taps into these veins in the way an acupuncture needle does.[3] The *Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions* describes it as an ancient Chinese "proto-science" of siting homes for the living and the dead to make the most of the vital breath that circulates through the landscape.[4] ### Two schools Two approaches to locating this energy had begun to develop by the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE):[3] - The **form school** (*xingshi*) is based on the idea that water gathers and holds *qi* while wind scatters it. The name *feng shui* is shorthand for the principle of holding back the wind and storing the water.[3] Australian researchers Xin Janet Ge and Michael Mak describe it as the approach most used for buildings, based on reading the shape of the mountains and watercourses around a site.[6] - The **compass school** (*liqi*) is based on the theory of the five phases of *qi*. It links these phases with the eight trigrams of the *Book of Changes* (*Yijing*), and holds that a person's year of birth corresponds to a particular trigram, so that rooms and buildings can be arranged to face favourable directions.[3] Practitioners also take account of the five elements and of *yin* and *yang*, and traditionally used a circular wooden plate inscribed with a neo-Confucian map of the cosmos to choose the best sites for buildings, graves and temples.[5] ### Uses Knowing what feng shui was traditionally used for helps explain why it still matters to many Chinese families: it concerned not only buildings but the welfare of the living and of their ancestors.[2][7][6] Feng shui experts advised on the best places for roads, bridges, canals, wells and mines, and especially for graves. A body might be kept unburied until a site with harmonious currents was found, and some bodies were reburied.[2] In the account of Erika Bourguignon, geomancers may also look for the causes of illness and misfortune in a badly placed home or ancestral tomb, and recommend remedies such as reburial, moving a tomb or building a wall.[7] Traditional design rules include protecting a dwelling from the west, giving it a main façade facing south, and building in response to the surrounding land, winds and water.[1] Ge and Mak write that, for many Chinese families, feng shui is an important consideration when buying a home, and that some will pay more for a property with good feng shui or decide against a cheap one with poor feng shui.[6] ## Scope ### What it includes - Choosing sites for houses, other buildings and graves[5][2] - Arranging rooms and orientating buildings to suit the flow of *qi*[3] - Advice on property and building design[6] ### What it is not - Feng shui is not a health treatment. The *Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine* says changes to a living space shouldn't be relied on as the only treatment for health problems, and that diagnosis and treatment by a qualified health professional is needed for any physical disorder.[8] ## Traditions and lineage Reference works differ on how old feng shui is: the *Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture* describes the beliefs as nearly two thousand years old,[1] while Ge and Mak describe a body of knowledge developed over 3,000 years ago and first taught in the *Book of Burial*, a classic text from the Jin dynasty.[6] In classical Chinese sources the practice was also called *ti li* ("land patterns") and *kan-yü*.[2] Feng shui became known to English-speaking readers through studies published in the nineteenth century by the British missionary Ernest Eitel (1873) and J. J. M. de Groot (1892).[3] According to Field, the wider public in the United States discovered feng shui only in recent decades, although Chinese communities there had always consulted their own feng shui masters, and every major American city came to have its own community of feng shui consultants.[3] Belief in feng shui remains strong among Chinese people, although communist authorities have discouraged it, and a feng shui consultant advised on aspects of the design of Foster's Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building (1979–86).[1] ## Context ### Within Spiritualism Spiritfold has found no published source linking feng shui with Spiritualism. Its roots lie in Chinese ideas about the land, *qi* and ancestral graves,[3][2] rather than in mediumship, which Spiritualists understand as communication with spirits that gives evidence of life after death.[9] ### In Australian Spiritualism Spiritfold has found no published source linking feng shui with [Spiritualism](https://spiritfold.com/Spiritualism) in Australia. ### A Spiritualist perspective Feng shui is a Chinese tradition with its own long history, schools and experts, and a Spiritualist would regard it with respect as exactly that, not as something that belongs to Spiritualism. It has no known link with Spiritualist teaching, and a thoughtful Spiritualist would be careful not to borrow it loosely or claim to understand it better than those who have learned it within its own culture. There is nothing in Spiritualism against arranging a home with care and attention, and a calm, well-ordered room can be a good place to meditate or sit for development. But that is a practical matter, not [mediumship](https://spiritfold.com/Mediumship). Anyone advising others on feng shui should be honest about their training, avoid frightening people about misfortune in their homes, and, as the page notes, never suggest that changes to a building take the place of proper health care. ## Feng shui in Australia Ge and Mak, of the University of Technology Sydney and the University of Newcastle, compared feng shui with Western ideas of sustainable design in a 2013 paper that used three apartments in Chatswood, Sydney, as case studies. They concluded that the two approaches share an aim of human wellbeing and a concern with the relationship between people and their built surroundings, but differ in method: Western sustainable design puts more weight on measuring physical features such as water and energy efficiency, while feng shui emphasises balance.[6] ## Safety and good practice The *Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine* advises that people redesigning a home according to feng shui principles should follow building codes and fire safety rules.[8] ## Related modalities - [Astrology](https://spiritfold.com/Astrology) - [Pendulum dowsing](https://spiritfold.com/Pendulum_dowsing) - [Numerology](https://spiritfold.com/Numerology) ## References 1. Curl, James Stevens. "Feng Shui". *A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture*. Oxford University Press. Via [Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/diseases-and-conditions/pathology/feng-shui) (accessed 11 October 2026). 2. "Geomancy". *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology*. Gale. Via [Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/other-religious-beliefs-and-general-terms/miscellaneous-religion/geomancy) (accessed 11 October 2026). 3. Field, Stephen L. "Feng Shui". *Contemporary American Religion*. Gale. Via [Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/diseases-and-conditions/pathology/feng-shui) (accessed 11 October 2026). 4. Bowker, John. "Geomancy". *The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions*. Oxford University Press. Via [Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/other-religious-beliefs-and-general-terms/miscellaneous-religion/geomancy) (accessed 11 October 2026). 5. Bowker, John. "Feng-shui". *The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions*. Oxford University Press. Via [Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/diseases-and-conditions/pathology/feng-shui) (accessed 11 October 2026). 6. Ge, Xin Janet and Michael Y. Mak. ["Purchasing Family Homes: Feng Shui versus Sustainability"](https://wbc2013.apps.qut.edu.au/papers/cibwbc2013_submission_61.pdf). In *Proceedings of the 19th CIB World Building Congress, Brisbane 2013: Construction and Society*. Queensland University of Technology, 2013. Repository record at [UTS OPUS](http://hdl.handle.net/10453/27673) (accessed 11 October 2026). 7. Bourguignon, Erika. "Geomancy". *Encyclopedia of Religion* (1987; revised bibliography). Gale. Via [Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/other-religious-beliefs-and-general-terms/miscellaneous-religion/geomancy) (accessed 11 October 2026). 8. Ford-Martin, Paula. "Feng Shui". *Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine*. Gale. Via [Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/diseases-and-conditions/pathology/feng-shui) (accessed 11 October 2026). 9. Spiritualists' National Union (United Kingdom). ["Mediumship"](https://snu.org.uk/about-us/about-spiritualism/mediumship/). SNU (accessed 12 October 2026). ## Further reading - Bourguignon, Erika. "Geomancy". *Encyclopedia of Religion*. Gale, 1987. [Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/other-religious-beliefs-and-general-terms/miscellaneous-religion/geomancy). - Field, Stephen L. "Feng Shui". *Contemporary American Religion*. Gale. [Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/diseases-and-conditions/pathology/feng-shui). - Ge, Xin Janet and Michael Y. Mak. ["Purchasing Family Homes: Feng Shui versus Sustainability"](https://wbc2013.apps.qut.edu.au/papers/cibwbc2013_submission_61.pdf). Queensland University of Technology, 2013.