FENG SHUI (風水)

Feng Shui (風水, "wind and water") is one of the best-known Chinese metaphysical practices in the West. Its roots lie in Daoist natural philosophy and geomancy, practiced in China since at least the Han dynasty (2nd century BCE). Historically, Feng Shui was used for selecting burial sites, constructing temples, palaces, and cities. In the 20th century, the system spread worldwide, often in a simplified "decorative" form that draws criticism from professional masters.

The system encompasses several schools with different emphases. The Form School (Luan Tou, "walking dragon") works with terrain, mountains, rivers, and the placement of structures. The Compass School uses the luo pan — a specialized compass with concentric rings — for precise orientation according to the eight trigrams of the Bagua and the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching. The Flying Stars School (Xuan Kong Fei Xing) is the most technically sophisticated: it constructs a temporal matrix of numbers 1-9 moving through the Lo Shu square depending on the period and orientation of the building.

Bagua (八卦, eight trigrams) is the key scheme of the system: eight sectors corresponding to eight trigrams, eight compass directions, eight life areas (wealth, fame, relationships, family, health, children, knowledge, career), and five elements. The placement of objects in space relative to the Bagua and their correspondence with elemental cycles creates a "map" of the house or room, from which recommendations are derived.

In Errarium, Feng Shui (#51) is unique among all methods on the platform: it is the only method that works primarily with space rather than with personality or events. Its closest relatives by toolset are Wu Xing (#24) and the 9 Star Ki system (#40), which use the Lo Shu square. The fundamental distinction is the spatial, rather than temporal or biographical, orientation of the method.