 Deep in the heart of New York City's Chinatown, is an office of two Feng Shui masters, where framed photos decorate the walls next to crazy, fancy fountains and a megaton of plants. My kind of place. But of all these photos, there's one that's weirder than the others. In it, you'll see a woman named Poon Ying standing next to a significantly less orange Donald Trump. With a phrase, photo taken at the Trump International Hotel and Tower, groundbreaking and blessing ceremony June 1995. Now I know what you're thinking. Trump doesn't exactly embody the principles of an ancient Chinese philosophy that aims to harmonize people with their surroundings. But according to Poon Ying, who is his chief Feng Shui advisor for decades, incorporating those principles into his real estate holdings was always one of his first priorities to attract Asian investors. And apparently one of his closely guarded secrets behind his success in business. Since the Western Feng Shui boom began back in the 70s, this ancient art form has got gobbled up by the spiritual community as an over-glorified interior decorating scheme. And almost every spiritual entrepreneur is pushing it today. A lot of the time without knowing any of the history or actual theory behind it outside of, hey, face the right direction and you'll get good luck and resonate. Which is just, ugh, ugh, I'm totally done with it. And you know what else we're done with these past couple of years, ugh. And sure, while we can leave you today better equipped to understand and harness Feng Shui to improve and transform your environment, we can also leave you much more fully equipped and prepared to tackle this brand new year and all of the blessings and challenges that await you. Introducing our 2022 Almanac of the New Age. With this extensive guide, you'll be provided the knowledge you need to work with the energies of 2022 rather than against them. Go swipe up your copy now and we promise your 2023 self will thank you later. Here's the deal. Get nearly everything you think you know about Feng Shui if you learned it from a New Age book. Anyone who teaches Feng Shui without having a solid grounding in classical Chinese philosophy is like someone practicing surgery without studying anatomy. It just doesn't work and it can even be dangerous. In fact, one of the major criticisms that mainstream science has with Feng Shui is that in most experiments where it's been tried, no two professionals agree on the right direction or flow of Qi. So it comes across like it's all pure guesswork. In reality, unless you've read the Yi Qing, Book of Burial or the Book of the Tomb, or learned from an actual Feng Shui master, you aren't really qualified to tell someone where to put their bed. And like any profession, there are a lot of people who know how to take advantage of people's beliefs and gullibility, because Feng Shui is a mysterious or exotic Oriental practice that the Starbucks hipsters just down quicker than their Chai lattes. In order to really, really understand what exactly Feng Shui is, we need to go back into ancient history, like really ancient, and look at some astronomy since before the invention of the Feng Shui compass, all those lucky and unlucky directions were calculated using the stars. The practice is as old as Chinese culture itself, with Stone Age villages along the Yellow River dating back to 6000 BC even practicing it. Back in 2001, a grave was unearthed in the Henan province of China and it was kind of a big deal. It got interesting when the skeleton was found with two figurines made mostly of shells, a dragon to the east and a tiger to the west. And the center of the grave was a model representation of Beidou, the Chinese name for the Big Dipper. Since the dragon and tiger are also constellations in the Chinese sky, it's pretty clear that the early emperors and sages were orienting their tombs with the yearly revolution of the Big Dipper around the North Star. Yeah, but why is all this important? Well, because Feng Shui was originally a practice meant to orient the homes of the dead. Basically the tombs. Not the living. But before we can talk about why, we need to cover something even bigger. Qi. Qi is the basic force behind all of Feng Shui. It's the energy through which it, in most of our existence, is said to work. Thousands of pages of books and scrolls over the last 4,000 years have been dedicated to the idea and, to be honest, no English translation can do it justice. While energy might capture some of its physical characteristics, it doesn't even come close to addressing its spiritual qualities. Now, the ancient book of burial, written by the 4th century Taoist sage Gua Pu, characterizes Qi as life breath. But in its earliest context, Qi was actually used as a description for weather. According to the Zuol commentary, Qi was a force composed of the six phases. Cold, warmth, wind, rain, darkness, and light. In the early days, the word actually just meant vapor, or steam. Basically anything in the sky, like clouds, but by the time Confucius came along, it had come to mean a kind of animating force in the atmosphere that was manifested in weather phenomena that actively influenced the human body. If you looked after your environment, and the Qi was flowing harmoniously in the world, the individual would be healthy. But if there was a block where the atmosphere was damaged somehow, it would manifest as fevers, chills, or even sickness on a society-wide scale. Hey, I'm not saying anything. The science of feng shui analyzed this force in the environment with the intention of controlling its manifestations for the individual. I call it a science because in the beginning it really kind of was. The practice was based entirely on mathematical calculations of stars, an empirical observation of the weather patterns around you that you could then use to inform your theory about where the Qi was flowing. But as time progressed, and astrology and numerology got lubed in, it became less of a concrete science and more of an art form. The quote-unquote art of feng shui isn't as much based on elemental physical world, but requires a belief in something like a force of destiny or even fate. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's any less effective. See, Qi is said to ride the feng, meaning wind, and scatter. But it is retained and collected when it comes to the content with shui, water. The ancient sages collected it to prevent its dissipation and guided it in specific ways to assure as much Qi as possible was retained in a specific area. That's why it was called feng shui, literally the art of wind and water. According to the laws of feng shui, a place that attracts water is the first and utmost priority, followed by a site that catches wind. And going as far back as the Shang Dynasty, good or bad times for feng shui, was determined through oracle bone readings. Very cool. Remember the aunt Wu episode of Avatar, where that old woman threw dragon bones on a fire and then interpreted the cracks and aim got all hung up on Kitarra? Yeah, that's a totally real thing. Okay, well maybe not with the dragons, but still. We have records of turtle shells or animal bones that are inscribed with phrases like, on such and such a day, a crack was made in this bone. And so and so, divined that the king needs to build a city over the hill. Does the High God say we're gucci? Good news, High God says the place is lit. Go for it. Obviously, with a few more thousand, four sooths or whatever, but you get the idea. Throw in some Taoist philosophy on yin and yang, which originally denoted sunshine and shade in its earliest form. And we start to see the main principle behind all the feng shui, orientating the tomb and home to collect the most amount of qi by facing it in a correct direction that is calculated by a mixture of astrological and physical signs. So why is everyone so obsessed with dead people and whether they're being put in juicy qi spots? I said qi spots, you guys. Oh, Jesus, really should have read the script on this one. Because feng shui was originally a form of ancestor worship, there was this belief in ancient China that the ghosts of ancestors and other independent, intangible forces, both personal and impersonal, kind of like great grandma and river spirit, could affect the material world and that these forces needed to be looked after through rites and suitable burial places, because their support ensured the success and balance of the living. The spirits were always thought to be supporting us, and by orientating their homes in the right way, we could strengthen them, and they could support us better in return. When it comes to feng shui in practice, there are generally two schools of thought, li fa, meaning compass, and zheng fa, meaning form. The form, referred to in zheng fa, is the shape of the environment itself, like mountains, rivers, plateaus, buildings, and general surroundings. It covers everything from the five celestial animals, a phoenix, a green dragon, a white tiger, a black turtle, and a yellow snake. Ideas about yin and yang and the traditional five elements of the wuxin, fire, water, earth, metal, and wood. This school generally analyzes the shape of the land and flow of the wind and water to find that place with perfect shi. It also considers the time of important events, such as the birth of the resident and the building of the structure. If we look at a few ancient Chinese texts, actually, we see just how important that relationship between qi and the land really is. The guan su text reads, water is the blood and qi of the earth, flowing and communicating as it's sinews and veins. Way later, after the forum school developed, we see the book of burial again, saying, qi flows where the earth changes shape. The flora and fauna are thereby nourished. It flows within the ground, follows the form of the terrain, and pulls where the terrain runs its course. According to the book, the best place to build a tomb or house in that case is an area where the features of the land finish, but they didn't end there. The sages also brought in some heavy astrology and Chinese zodiac stuff when considering it all. They looked at the four palaces of heaven in Chinese mythology and brought them into the physical world as the cardinal directions. Again, they tell us that, the dragon and tiger are what protect the district of the home. On a hill amidst folds of strata, if a place is open to the left or vacant to the right, if it is empty in front or hollow at the rear, qi will dissipate in the blowing wind. Back to water though, flowing water was also said to attract qi like a magnet, and an auspicious home was one that encourages water to linger in its vicinity without stagnating. That's why so many Zen gardens have those cute little bamboo flowing brooks that just look beautiful and feel great. If we think about the form school as dealing with physical qi, then the compass school deals with the cosmic qi. It relies on astrology and numerology, and helps us align ourselves to its flow. It works by using a special compass called the luo ban, to establish 8 heavenly directions, all of which have a different kind of qi and an orienting stuff in the right direction using something called a bagua. Eight symbols use in Taoism to represent different parts of reality. So how would you actually go about using feng shui in your life right now? Well, in modern practice at least, the whole process generally revolves around something known as your life gua. Your life gua is a number in Chinese numerology that determines which directions and cheese of those eight are good for you specifically, and which ones will screw you up specifically. So before we get into it, you'll need two things, a pen and paper, and your birthday. Which I guess is technically three things, but anyway, are you guys ready? Take your year of birth, let's say 1956 for example, and add the last two digits together. So in this case, adding 5 and 6, giving you 11. Now take the number 11, sum that number together, in this case, 1 plus 1, which gives you 2. Then if you're a male, take the number 10, and minus that number off. So in this case, 10 minus 2 equals 8, which gives you your life gua. If you're a female, you add 5 instead, so it would be 2 plus 5 equals 7. Okay, but let's be honest, numbers are pretty boring, so here is a quick video of some cute puppies! Anyway, there is one major exception to all of this stuff though, and that's the number 5. If your final number ends up as a 5, traditionally you need to convert it into a 2 if you're a male, or an 8 if you're a female. Why you may ask? Well, this is because on the old school of Luopan, compasses that determine the directions. The number 5 was considered the center and had no direction in itself, but this has been adapted in modern versions and has started showing up on charts. Once you have your life gua, you can use this chart to see your good and bad directions and start incorporating feng shui into your life right now by paying attention to which directions you have certain things in. Don't worry, we'll also leave a link to this exact chart in the description of this video too. Now, there's still a lot more to cover, but we're going to just let you dive into the sources yourself in the description if you want to explore the history and practice of it all. And it's worth pointing out that even landscape ecologists are getting into traditional feng shui nowadays, and spiritual architecture that incorporates sacred geometry as well. Feng shui and vastu shastra is going through a huge boom right now, so it's the perfect time to get into it. And if you took the time to calculate your life gua from earlier, let us know in the comments. Once you get past the boring math stuff, this stuff gets pretty interesting really quick. Alright guys, it looks like it's my time. Until next time folks, later!