60s quick read:
- It is not really necessary to do anything specific for feng shui in the year 2022. Practicality comes first. Feng shui is also not about furniture placement or ‘auspicious’ items.
- There is a proper, structured way of applying feng shui. In general, it is more important to take a macro view of things first, rather than to go straight into the micro details.
- The 8 Mansions feng shui method describes the structure of your house and it’s the foundation, or the base, which gives your house a certain quality. Each house tells a story of how the life of the people living in it will unfold.
- The Flying Stars feng shui method lends the ability to go into more detail about how things will unfold for people living in the house. Stars (both auspicious and inauspicious) will land in certain sectors of the house and bring with it a certain quality.
- The 20-year Feng Shui major cycle is the most important factor to consider if you’re in the midst of property hunting.
- Most practitioners say that Period 9 starts in 2024 but it has already started since Dec 20 during the grand conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.
Hello everyone, Happy New Year! I know everyone’s excited about the Chinese zodiac forecasts for 2022, but our focus today shall be on feng shui. We are going to talk about another popular feng shui technique aside from 8 Mansions mentioned in my previous post. I’ve been receiving many questions on whether there’s a need to do anything specific for feng shui in the year 2022, and my answer to that would be – not really. I know it’s not something you would typically hear, but read on and hear my thoughts as a practitioner.
When feng shui doesn’t work
It’s common that everyone wishes to fully utilise metaphysics and feng shui, but while we do that, let’s not forget to take a step back and think about practical wisdom and proper application, and not be misled by the myths that have been perpetuated for the longest time. It’s simply not possible to be making changes to your home or shifting rooms for your family every single year, and there is no point – this is not the best application of feng shui. I have friends and clients who practise that despite being advised against it, and it has brought nothing but frustration and inconvenience.
Feng shui is also never about placing items around the house to ‘enhance’ certain areas – it has and will always be about astronomy and geography, how nature’s laws unfold and how we relate to it. Every house paints a story of the lives of the people living inside. To further my efforts in dispelling the myths surrounding this field and also help everyone benefit from feng shui the right way, let’s first understand a bit about the theory and history. I know it’s boring, but it will save you from a lot of headaches in future!
8 Mansions vs Flying Stars
These are two very fundamentally different techniques, with Flying Stars being the more advanced technique that came at a later stage. It will take me a thesis-length essay to give a full breakdown of the differences, but generally: 8 Mansions focuses on the fundamental laws of nature built around the theory of the 8 Trigrams (八卦). It’s basically Chinese cosmology applied to a house because the Chinese sages believed all manifestations on Earth will parallel these laws.
This method views your home as a small universe on its own. 8 Mansions is an interpretation of the laws that are ‘fixed’ and won’t change, and this method describes the structure of your house, and it’s the foundation or the base that gives your house a certain quality. To make alterations to a house under the 8 Mansions method is often difficult because it will involve shifting the main door, master bedroom and kitchen, which we all know is close to impossible when you’re living in an apartment. That’s not saying that making alterations based on Flying Stars is easy – it’s just as difficult. A true remedy requires a lot of flexibility which a modern-day apartment does not have.
The demographics of the people who can fully utilise feng shui are those who are wealthy enough to build a landed property from the ground up, giving them full control of the property’s layout. This is the reason why I encourage people to check the feng shui of the apartment before committing to the purchase, because most of us don’t have that luxury of altering our home’s layout and most apartment designs you see these days are rather templated.
Flying Stars describes the process and unfolding of these laws from the foundation established by the 8 Mansions method, which gives Flying Stars the ability to go into more detail on how things will unfold for the people living in the house. Certain stars are considered auspicious, and some aren’t, and each of them will land in a certain sector of the house. I’ll touch more on this in the next section below. Both methods have their merits, and modern-day practitioners often combine both schools of feng shui when assessing a house’s quality and suitability for the client.
Feng shui periods and their significance
One of the building blocks of Chinese metaphysics and feng shui is astronomy because knowledge of astronomy allows our ancestors to measure and reckon time, and through measuring time, patterns and trends can be observed. This is what gives Chinese metaphysics its ability to forecast events. There are nine Periods in feng shui, each lasting 20 years. Each feng shui Period is believed to bring about a major change in the world and trends, industries, and even people’s beliefs will start shifting.
These 20-year Periods are a way of keeping time by observing the position of the planets. If you’re a mahjong hobbyist, you’ve probably heard of 大三元 (dà sān yuán). This term is actually related to feng shui, where three Periods represent one 元, and one 元 represents three Periods or 60 years, which is the sexagenary cycle you often hear in Chinese metaphysics.
You might be asking, why 20 years? The logic is the same as why there are 12 Zodiacs – because Jupiter takes 12 years to circle Earth and our ancestors wanted to figure out how long a year lasted. They did this by looking at the ‘clock’ in the sky, which is the Big Dipper as it swings around the Polaris star. The 20-year period is taken from the conjunction (when planets meet!) of Jupiter and Saturn, and it has been traditionally marked a period of great change by both Western and Eastern astrologists.
Most practitioners would say that Period 9 starts in 2024 as this belief was passed down during the feudal era in China, but Period 9 has actually started since Dec 20 during the significant conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the middle of the pandemic. This discrepancy is because the time taken for Saturn and Jupiter to align is a little less than 20 years and 19.859 years, to be precise. For more information, you can refer to my article here.
What are the ‘Flying Stars’ you hear so often?
The 9 Flying Stars that you keep hearing of are from the Big Dipper, which holds 7 stars that revolve around the Polaris star, with the remaining 2 stars being Mizar and Alcor, also known as 左輔右弼 (zuǒ fǔ yòu bì), which represent the Emperor’s personal officials. These are extremely auspicious stars to have in one’s astrological chart. The 9 Flying Stars are known to ‘shift’ every year, and this is what unnerves most people because they are worried that a negative star might end up in an important sector like their master bedroom or their children’s bedroom.
The ‘shifting’ of the 9 Flying Stars is actually an observable astronomical phenomenon, but I shall not bore everyone with the technicalities here. The mistake made here is that most people only look at the Annual Flying Stars, and they completely overlook the macro-view and fail to take the 20-year feng shui Period into account first. If your house is optimised for Period 9, there’s no need to worry too much about the individual years, in my opinion. This concept is very similar to analysing your BaZi (八字), in that there’s no point looking at your yearly ‘luck’ (流年运) if you don’t get your 10-year ‘luck’ (大运) right first. This is also the reason why I always tell people not to be too absorbed by the Chinese zodiac forecasts you see every year because it lacks rigour and it isn’t the right way of doing things.
The ideal way of tapping into feng shui
The “quality of a house” in terms of feng shui will change whenever we enter into a new Period. Many feng shui enthusiasts tend to focus only on the Annual Flying Stars, which assesses the house’s feng shui for that particular year. They are either completely unaware or fail to realise the importance of the macro-view of things, which is the 20-year Period Flying Stars, which I mentioned above. I know we’ve all been trained to be attentive to detail in the corporate world, but when it comes to feng shui, it’s a must to get the big picture and macro view of things right first. In other words, we need to take care of the house’s 20-year “luck” cycle before we go into the annual ‘luck’. You may have read that certain stars are auspicious and some aren’t, which is true, but it isn’t the full picture.
The “auspiciousness” of the stars will change according to which Period we are in. In other words, a star that is auspicious in Period 8 may be less so in Period 9, whereas a negative star in Period 8 will slowly start to manifest its good qualities as we move towards other Periods. That being said, 20 years is a long time, so there’s plenty of time for people to prepare before a shift in the feng shui Periods happen. The stars that everyone wishes to tap into during Period 8 and Period 9 would be Star 1 (一白贪狼星), Star 8 (八白左辅星) and 9 (九紫右弼星). Star 1 and 8 are the stars generally associated with wealth and fame, whereas Star 9 is associated with career achievements and status. The rule of thumb is that you would want these stars to be areas of your house where you spend a lot of time, which naturally means you have to declutter first. Hopefully, these Stars don’t end up in the toilet.
Note that this is just a very superficial level of application, and there’s a lot more one could go into, such as the effects of the Mountain Stars and Water Stars, which is a subset of Flying Stars. Let’s not forget you need to get the facing direction of the unit right as well to tap into certain special Flying Star arrangements, and it’s not as simple as looking at where your main door is facing.
How long it take for feng shui to take effect
The effects of a house’s feng shui typically take around 3 years to come into full effect based on case studies, so be patient and give it a bit of time if you happen to find yourself in an auspicious house recently under the guidance of a feng shui practitioner. It is a widely held misconception that a feng shui master can come into your house and remedy all the flaws by placing a few items around the house and shifting furniture around. Feng shui should never be seen as a miracle cure to life’s problems or challenges. A true feng shui remedy involves a lot of work, which is often not possible for apartments these days because its layout is almost impossible to alter.
Often, the best one can do is to combine rooms, which alters the house’s structure under the 8 Mansions method, but even that is not always applicable. Unless you have a plot of land and wish to build a landed property, you can forget about shifting the Sitting & Facing the Direction of your home. Tilting the door isn’t going to work, and it’s a farce invented to appease people who are hell-bent on convincing themselves that their property’s Sitting & Facing Direction has changed. In conclusion, if you’re looking to apply feng shui to your next home, please be aware that Period 9 is already here, and you should be taking this into account in your next purchase if you’re a believer in feng shui.
As Period 9 has just started, take your time to find a good house so that you can reap the benefits of it in the long run. A house with good feng shui is always worth holding on to. Yes, feng shui can enhance well-being, and it pays to give it some attention, but expect the hunt for a good house to be a long and arduous one. It doesn’t come easy. Trust me. Don’t end up wasting too much time worrying about 2022 and what you read on zodiac forecasts on billboards and TV. Focus on planning ahead, and I’m sure you’ll find a good home for you and your family in no time!
This article was written by Sean Chan. Born in Taiwan and raised in Singapore, Sean Chan is an old soul and a modern-day Feng Shui Master. He works in a tech unicorn by day and as a Chinese metaphysics consultant specialising in BaZi, Zi Wei Dou Shu and Feng Shui by night. Through his blog, he hopes to dispel the myths and superstitions surrounding this field, and help people from all walks of life benefit from metaphysics the way its founders intended.
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