| Most Western ideas about Feng Shui are utterly wrong and generally based on a variety of weird concepts pulled from European folklore and New Age marketing. Out of the entire scientific system, only a fragment of actual Feng Shui knowledge has reached the public. Despite all of the books rushing into print claiming "Feng Shui this" and "Feng Shui that," the theoretical depth and full potential of the authentic material remain virtually unknown to the public.
For Black Sect Buddhists and other New Age types, their Bagua (or Ba Gua, Pa Kua) is a so-called "mystical octagon of symbolic correlations," This cafeteria-style approach to borrowed ideas was whipped into a lovely froth from Western cultural icons and concepts. The new bagua supposedly represents "eight fundamental life conditions" that correlate to "a different aspect of ourselves." Yet it was created within the last twenty years and marketed entirely to New Agers ignorant of Asian culture.
According to Ho Lynn's article in the execrable Feng Shui Anthology (published and edited by Jami Lin), this new Bagua was created by self-proclaimed "wandering impostor" Thomas Lin Yun, founder and spiritual leader of an American minority church called Black Sect Tibetan Buddhism. The new bagua is marketed as a "revolutionary" and "innovative" step in Chinese philosophy. In fact, it is so "revolutionary" that Asians laugh it off and the few sinologists aware of it snort derisively at its mention. As one Korean-American practitioner of martial and healing arts said, "This is the sort of thing that Asians would use to make money off non-Asians." The theories are labeled "Mutationist" for good reason.
According to the Feng Shui Anthology, Lin Yun took the Taiji (the Primordial, Great Unity or "Yin Yang symbol," as everyone calls it) and set it spinning in its opposite direction. The Taiji and its corresponding systems move clockwise. A left-spinning Taiji - that is, one spinning counterclockwise - correlates with global culture's views of aberrant behavior, misfortune, and necromancy.
Left (lyft: "weak," "worthless" in Old English) still retains its primordial associations with antisocial behavior and disaster, the concept of sinister ("left hand," "unlucky side"), in Sanskrit sauvastika ("all is evil," movement which upsets the whole of nature). The Tibetan Bon religion uses symbols flowing counterclockwise to indicate black magic and opposition to Buddhism. A movement withershins ("against-direction"), nirrita, or cartua-sul traditionally begins and ends in irreverence, heterodoxy, perversity, death, infertility, and black arts.
Another bizarre theory promoted by the church is calling Kan, Kun, Qian, and Li yin guas because they don't look any different when you flip them on their heads. Yang guas are those trigrams that do look different when they're flipped. Flipping a trigram like a burger is a unique approach without any historical precedent - certainly one reason to call this stunt "innovative" in BTB marketing materials and articles.
Knowing the telltale direction indicators makes it easy to spot BTB ideas even when they have been repurposed to suit the ideologies of each new book by yet another self-proclaimed "Feng Shui master" who attended a Lin Yun seminar and was exhorted by him to rush out and get a book deal. They share one another's ideas and emphasize various New Age fads, folklore, mythologies, and psychobabble. Not one of these "masters" seems to be able to get the facts straight, which is the first indication that few, if any, have studied authentic Feng Shui or any Chinese science whatsoever.
Foundation Theory
The foundation of the Yijing is Yi or Change Theory, usually known as Yin Yang Theory. Its theories starkly contrast with those from Black Sect Buddhist practitioners. Yin Yang Theory is the same for authentic Feng Shui practitioners, acupuncturists and other medical practitioners. The different versions of Five Element Theory, part of Yin Yang Theory, are outlined below.
Cosmological Sequence
This sequence explains which elements (in the sense of phases or processes, not material substances) came into being in what order. No surprises here: Just as evolution explains water-enabled life, as we know it to evolve, so it is considered to have appeared first after Earth was formed. In medicine, this indicates the importance of the kidneys as the foundation of yin and yang of all organs and storehouse of essence that creates qi and mind. (Maciocia p. 23)
Enumeration Sequence
This sequence explains principles that concern rates of change in processes and sets for the theories that explain the generative (productive) and controlling sequences.
Controlling Sequence
The Controlling Sequence forms the so-called eternal recycling basis of BTB Feng Shui (Living Color, p. 23). (Never mind that the international symbol for recycling moves clockwise.) This sequence was used in ancient China for fate calculations and politics. Its most famous use was the symbolism of succeeding Chinese dynasties. Rarely used in ecological cycles, because long ago Chinese scientists determined that elements don't perpetually "control" one another. For instance, fire can "control" itself out of existence if it eliminates its fuel source. Used in medicine with the Generative Sequence to keep self-regulating balance in the body. (Maciocia p. 19)
Overacting Sequence
This sequence follows the flow of the Controlling Sequence but over-controls, causing a decrease, breaking the balance, and creating excesses. Maciocia (p. 20) uses the analogy of "the destructive actions of human beings toward Nature" to explain the workings of this cycle. Too much of a good thing, in this case, does create serious problems.
Insulting Sequence
This sequence reverses the Controlling Sequence and, like the Overacting Sequence, identifies abnormal relationships.
Generative Sequence
The Generative Sequence or Mutual Production Cycle (principle of "masking") applies to biology and ecology. It has a very long history as part of Chinese science because it is the only cycle where humans can intervene. It forms the principal process used by authentic Feng Shui practitioners to interact with the environment.
Its conclusions depend upon speed, rate, and quantity of a given process. Using this cycle much like a chemist uses compounds (for Daoists who devised Feng Shui techniques also devised alchemy and the foundations of modern chemistry), a Feng Shui practitioner can induce environmental change by adding or detracting from a process (one of the Five Elements) that creates or diminishes another process (another of the Five Elements). In other words, this cycle enables humans to carry fire with them on journeys by knowing how much fuel to give or withhold in order to control it.
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