Publisher's Synopsis
This book tracks the evolution of feng shui in detail in China from 221 BC till the present day, and then its spread throughout SE Asia, and finally to the rest of the world in the last 35 years. This has never been done before in English. The only information on the history of feng shui occurs as scattered chapters in a number of books, but these books often repeat the same tired generalisations, and include many largely erroneous statements such as: 1. "Feng shui is 6000 years old." In fact the characters 'feng shui' were not used in this context before 320 CE. Even the older names (ti li, kan yi, etc.) for this practice do not occur in any surviving texts before 221 BC. 2. "Feng shui derives from the Yi Jing". In fact, apart from the 8 trigrams being used as basic directional indicators, no feng shui compass shows the 60 hexagrams till 1600 CE, and not the full 64 hexagrams till 1824. 3. "The feng shui compass derives from a magnetised spoon revolving on a plate." In fact this incorrect deduction made by Wang Chen-To in 1946 (and later reluctantly repeated by Needham) was completely discredited by several researchers in the 1990s. This book has been meticulously researched, from authoritative Chinese texts and the analysis of many antique lo p'ans, and gives the real history of feng shui. It contains the biographical details of many masters, and tracks the developments and people involved in propagating feng shui in the US, UK, Europe and China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, in the 20th and 21st century, right up to date in 2012. It clearly shows the different feng shui methods and masters, and how they relate to each other.
