Feng Shui and I Ching

The Feng Shui Forum:
Feng Shui and the I Ching

The monthly meeting place for questions, answers, insights, ideas, awesome Feng Shui experiences.

Feng Shui (pronounced fung shway) is the ancient Eastern art of placement and design.

In my late teens, I discovered the I Ching (an ancient Chinese oracle meaning The Book of Changes). I carried it with me everywhere, studying and applying it at every opportunity. I remember being 23 and sitting on the back steps of a little house in the Arkansas delta, using the I Ching to help me decide whether or not to stay in that sleepy little town and rent a house for $75 per month. I think I can safely say that I was probably the only New Yorker to even consider that possibility, let alone use the I Ching to arrive at the decision!

Back then, the only copy I could find was Richard Wilhelm’s translation. My personal copy was filled with margin notes, underlines, and my own personal translations and understandings of the famously inscrutable text. By my late 30’s, it had literally become illegible from use. It was time to replace it, but here I ran into a problem. I didn’t want to replace it with another Wilhelm copy.

My studies and understandings over those 20 years had led me to a curious place. While I had learned a great deal from this version of the I Ching, and certainly had not been able to find an English translation that equaled it, I had also come to recognize its very serious limitations. I realized that in spite of his high intentions, respect, and great learning, the very western Wilhelm had not been able to accurately and completely translate the very Chinese I Ching. The more recent, “new age” versions were unbearable to me. So, I decided to wait.

And so I waited years for what I hoped would be inevitable. I believed that at some point in the not too distant future, a true translation would appear. I believed that such a translation would require a brilliant, bilingual Chinese Master, someone who was spiritually advanced, as well as being a great scholar, capable of translating the original symbols, or ideographs, as well as the written text. So I’m thrilled to be able to share with all of you just such a publication of an I Ching, translated by a true Taoist Master. It is everything I’d hoped it would be, and well worth the years I waited. (The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation by the Taoist Master Alfred Huang, Inner Traditions, Intl Ltd; ISBN: 0892816562. Hardcover - 576 pages (May 1998), $30.)

The importance of the I Ching to Feng Shui is akin to the importance of the earth to a tree. It is deeply rooted in, and springs forth from the I Ching. The tree could not exist without the earth. The eight primary tri-grams that compose the ba-gua are literally the roots of the I Ching’s 64 hexagrams. When you read references to the Early Heaven Sequence used for Yin dwellings as well as protection against malevolent spirits, and the Later Heaven Sequence used for Yang dwellings, you are encountering the history and power of the I Ching.

The I Ching is a book of divination and profound spiritual wisdom. As I study and spend time with this new translation, my heart literally leaps with joy at certain passages and explanations. I’m able to access a level of power and wisdom that intuitively I’ve always felt, or perhaps remembered. Now it’s visible on the printed page.

Last spring, while visiting San Francisco’s Chinatown, I was looking for the perfect set of Fu Dogs. I have the gift of knowing instantly when something is “right” for me, and I could not find my Fu Dogs! I finally realized that my dogs were actually meant to be physical, Pekinese, to be exact, and that I would ultimately provide living Fu Dogs for other Feng Shui practitioners.

My very first pet in this lifetime was a Pekinese named Pogo, followed later by another great being in Pekinese form named Bodhi. I’ve come to understand that they were guides and reminders of my life’s purpose and destiny. So I gave up on porcelain and became willing to welcome a Pekinese puppy into my life. This July, while staying at the meditation ashram I regularly visit, I dreamt in great and specific detail about this puppy. Several weeks ago in a series of amazing connections and events, all of them paralleling the details of the dream, I found her!

Master Huang’s I Ching arrived the same weekend. So how could I pass up the opportunity to use one incredible spiritual companion to name the other? By divination I arrived at hexagram 30, Li, translated by Master Huang as Brightness. It would take pages to begin to do justice to the interpretation of this hexagram. Suffice it to say that the puppy’s name, Li Li, or double brightness, is the perfect name for this little Leo Fu Dog. How grateful I am to have both of these treasures in my life once again!

And so, until next month, many blessings and much happiness. Please feel free to fax me at 713-861-9243, e-mail me at joani@wt.net, or call me at 713-861-0903 with your questions, feedback, or personal experience. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

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