An essay on fengshui

I’ve been working on job apps, so no time to post for a long time. Let’s get back into it with an approach to something ridiculous, but that I need to wrap my mind around for this project: fengshui.

Let’s try for a moment to free fengshui from all the comparisons and linkages in which it is typically enmeshed: is it “scientific,” Is it “superstition”? Is it “Daoist”? Instead consider it simply as a loose collection of ideas about the environment.

So let’s start from scratch, with the general concerns that characterize fengshui. Let us consider the aspects of physical geography — topology, hydrology, climate, ecology, soil quality — that impact the suitability of sites for the activities most associated with human settlement. Let us zoom in consider the specifically material aspects of settlement — that is, what sites are good for building structures. Let us put this in very simple and recognizable terms: when you go camping, where do you choose to pitch your tent?

First, we want a relatively flat site to make it easy to erect the structure.

But that flatness comes with a few caveats — if the site and surrounding area is too flat then water will gather when it rains, making it swampy and unpleasant.

So we want a flat area surrounded by slopes.

Well, not quite surrounded. If the land slopes upward on all sides, we are again stuck in a swampy basin. If it slopes down on all sides, we are exposed on a windy, sun-beaten peak. So ideally, we want upward slopes on two or three sides as a protection against wind, but we want at least one downward sloping passage to give excess water a point of egress.

So we want a flat area almost surrounded by slopes, with a channel to drain excess water.

But the slopes also cannot be too steep. Steep slopes leading toward our tent will channel the water in too quickly, bringing torrents when it rains. Steep slopes leading away from our tent will let the water flow away too quickly, carring away the soil that supports our tent.

So we want a flat area almost surrounded by gentle slopes, with a gradual channel to drain excess water.

Notice that the same principles that protect our tent from the powers of wind and rain, have almost certainly provided us with a gently-flowing stream of fresh water. The same hills that protect against the wind catch the rain, the same channels that prevent swampiness and erosion keep that water moving to prevent stagnation.

I would like to stop for a moment and notice that we have recreated the essentials of fengshui from first principles: the term fengshui 風水 — “wind and water” — probably originates as an abbreviation of the longer phrase cangfeng deshui 藏風得水 — “block wind and obtain water.” This is exactly what we have done. We have also noticed, as the ancients surely did, that these principles “block wind” and “obtain water” compliment and reinforce one another.

Let’s continue...

We might think about vegetation: we probably want a site with trees to block some — but not all — of the sun, but clear of excess underbrush that gets in the way of building and hides critters. This leads us quickly to the well-known preference for clearings in open forests, and in particular for old-growth conifers (songbai 松柏). (Note: there is a notion that humans have an innate preference for open woodland — especially wooded foothills — dating back to our evolution from apes in just such an environment. Further note: there is also a notion that Chinese civilization is particularly anti-forest; I think if read carefully, the fear of forest is directed in particular to dense or overgrown woods, and that there is a longterm preference for open woodland)

We might also think about orientation: facing the East Asian monsoon, the southeast slopes of mountains will be sunny and wet, and the northwest slopes will be dark and dry. This leads us directly to the principles of yin and yang: words that originate by adding a “hill” (fu 阜) to the terms for “dark” (yin 侌 — depicting cloud-shadow) and “bright” (yang 昜 — depicting sun-rays) to yield yin 陰 — the “dark [north] side of the hill” and yang 陽 — the “bright [south] side of the hill.” By extension, yin and yang are widely applied to rivers; in the Chinese context of east-running rivers, yin now applies to the shady south side of the river (generally the north slope of a hill) and yang now applies to the unshaded north side. Observe the early and persistent preference for yang cities (e.g.. Luoyang 洛陽 — “the sunny side of the Luo [river]”) — that is for cities on the north side of rivers and the south side of hills. Note to that that these sites are typically not only sunny, but also well watered and less prone to erosion than the south (yin) sides of rivers.

Yin and yang are probably the first abstractions of geographic ideas in the Chinese tradition. From the observation that yang areas are well-lit and good for human settlement it is but a short step to use the yang principle with other associated phenomena — motion, growth, warmth. From the abstraction of yang in opposition to yin, it is another small step to use these terms to describe other opposing principles — male and female, living and dead, light and heavy. Neither of these steps — observed association, abstracted parallel — is itself problematic, but by combination they potentially lead to logical fallacies. There is clear association between south slopes, warmth and stable soils, but no reason to associate these yang features with “male,” “life” or “lightness.” In other words, there are problems combining empirical associations and abstracted associations. Hold this thought for a moment.

By the Han (206 BCE — 220 CE), Chinese thought was full of abstract correspondences. Some were individual abstractions of physical principles: qi 氣 from “breath” to “matter-energy;” li 利 from “harvest” to “profit-benefit;” shi 勢 (originally yi 埶 without the li 力 “power” radical) from “agriculture-fertility” to “authority-influence” to “topography.” Many were groupings of complimentary-contrastive, often cyclical phenomena — the yin-yang binary; the five phases (wuxing 五行); the ten celestial stems and twelve terrestrial branches (tiangan dizhi 天干地支); the eight trigrams (bagua 八卦) and sixty-four hexagrams of the Changes (Yijing 易經).

I will not go into further details on the specifics of these systems. Let us instead consider what abstraction does…in the abstract: it allows individuals to acquire knowledge without personal experience. Abstract principles distill the empirical findings of earlier practitioners; they form coherent systems to group together related phenomena for ease of memory. Ultimately they give later practitioners approaches to situations that they had never personally encountered. In addition, abstract principles allow thinkers to approach situations that no-one has encountered, by theoretical rather than empirical reasoning.

Over time, a system of thought incorporates empirical exceptions to its theoretical predictions — either by building additional layers of abstraction, or by rejecting principles that are not predictive. These systems of thought grow quite complex, and in some cases hyper-specific.

We can imagine how a practitioner of fengshui might observe a particular variant of an “unlucky” landform at work — a “fire” hill, for example — and record this variant as predictive of the specific form of calamity observed — the death of a second son. A geomancer conditioned to the principle that a fire hill is unlucky, who observed the death of a second son associated with a particular variant of “fire” hill might assume that this particular variant always led to the death of second sons. He might record this observation, with it ultimately acquiring authority, and later application by geomancers who never observed the death of a second son in correlation with this particular landform.

Now let us think again about the type of systems that fengshui aimed to describe — climate and weather, soil, hydrology — and the types of systems it aimed to predict — health and livelihood; political, demographic and economic success. It is worth noting that the modern disciplines centered on these phenomena -meteorology, economics, political and soil science — have gotten really good at description, but are still really bad at prediction! That is because these are all chaotic systems — in the specifically mathematical notion of chaotic (sensitive dependence on initial conditions).

Mechanics, chemistry, astronomy, electricity and magnetism and many other physical sciences are complex, but not chaotic; once you figure out the proper principles, they are predictive. But the weather and the economy are both complex and chaotic; even if you have the right principles, they are still not predictive — at least not in specifics.

Nonetheless, weather and economics can be predicted in generalities. To predict in November that it will rain on April 2 is folly; to say that it will rain a lot in April is common sense (at least in Boston). To say the Dow Jones Industrial Average will reach 18,000 in February 2016 is ridiculous; to predict that it will reach 18,000 in the near future is hardly controversial.

So fengshui is a system of thought in which general principles perform very well, even in making the type of claims that might strike us as ridiculous (i.e. the site of tombs determining the luck of descendants). Yet fengshui is a system of thought in which specifics are largely random, as a function of the randomness of the systems it describes, the long-term accumulation of hyper-specific empirical data and continued, overdetermined attempts at abstract reasoning.

Now let us return to the issue of abstraction. In addition to conditioning later empirical observation, abstraction also allowed for purely theoretical speculation. This also led to overdetermined complexity as theorists theorized based on abstract principles. Eventually, a handful of compilers drew boundaries around the abstrations they found most coherent, including some and excluding others.

Let’s get specific for a minute. The earliest extant fengshui texts probably date between the late Han and the Jin (265–320 CE), perhaps earlier. But it was only in the late ninth or tenth centuries that the loose collection of geographic concepts were collected into conscious, self-referential systems — the so-called “form school” and “orientation school” of fengshui. In the Song, an unprecedentedly large volume of text was created around these schools. In a process apparently common across disciplines — seen in medicine and botany, as well as fengshui — and across regions — apparent in Europe as well as China — the abstract and empirical forms of knowledge eventually diverged. By the Yuan and early Ming, generalist elites could write about fengshui theory, but distanced themselves from the “geomancers” who actually “did” fengshui.

In other words the early modern period produced a consolidation of specialist thought that tended to privilege the abstract over the empirical. Some practitioners continued to accumulate observational data, and to base their work largely on accumulations of empirical results. But various forms of “high science” were created, wherein literate elites attempted to distance theory from practice; most of their work was at the plane of abstraction, and increasingly consisted of meta-studies of earlier semi-abstract work.

One of the processes involved in the separation of practical and theoretical fengshui was the increased importance of written documentation, and particularly of law. Experiential understanding of hydrology could not be produced in court; on the other hand, the abstract principles of theoretical fengshui meshed well with the abstract principles of law.

Through these divergent processes, we see the constant appearance of “dragon bones” in the legal documentation, and literati concerned with the stem-branch dating of burials; conversely elites demonized “geomancers,” lumping them with mediums (wu 巫), and generally tried to criminalize their practice. On the one hand, this reified abstract fengshui as legally efficacious. On the other hand, it encouraged “practical” geomancers to further obfuscate their craft, to make it harder for laypeople to perform fengshui survey without the aid of a specialist.

Finally, the abstraction of fengshui proceeded from the ritual and legal power it acquired. Concepts of ritual geography doubtless had both customary and legal implications from the Han or earlier. These forms of social power only increased in importance through the process of abstracting fengshui thought, and its increasingly formal implications both of itself and in the courts of law.

Once fengshui principles carried the weight of custom and law behind them, it became increasingly common to deploy fengshui instrumentally— to manipulate it for the social and legal power that it exerted over the environment rather than for the understanding of the environment that it could produce. Ascribing to one environment characteristics observed, described and abstracted from other environments carried the implication that that environment should be treated the same under custom and law.

Let’s follow this from the beginning. The ancients observe that certain places are good for graves — generally resulting from aspects of the physical environment; they describe features of these places. Later thinkers abstract from these features to argue why and how certain grave-sites work better (i.e. by producing luck among the mourning community). Over time, these “lucky” grave-sites are treated as “special.” Eventually, their “specialness” is encoded in specific ritual and legal systems. Finally, environments are legally encoded as “lucky” grave-sites — even if they lack the physical features originally observed to correlate with grave-site “luck.”

By this point, it is almost impossible to disentangle the empirical from the abstract from the instrumental. Fengshui was deployed to describe and predict the effects environment had on the social. I have asserted that this understanding worked very well for generalities, and chaotically for specifics. But fengshui was also as a form of social power over the environment. In this context, the descriptive features of fengshui are sublimated to its ascriptive power.

This, I believe, was the state of affairs by about the Ming Dynasty. In any case, this is the closest I can get to understanding the complexity of a system that seems simultaneously scientific and ridiculous.

The most useful work I’ve found on fengshui

Anderson, E. N. Mountains and Water : Essays on the Cultural Ecology of South Coastal China. Taipei: Chinese Association for Folklore, 1973.

Bruun, Ole. Fengshui in China : Geomantic Divination between State Orthodoxy and Popular Religion. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2003.

Chen, Jinguo 陈进国. Xinyang, yishi yu xiangtu shehui: fengshui de lishi renlei xue tansuo [Belief, ritual, and rural society: the historical anthropology of fengshui in Fujian, China]. 2 Volumes. Beijing: Zhongguo she hui ke xue chu ban she, 北京, 2005.

Paton, Michael John. Five Classics of Fengshui : Chinese Spiritual Geography in Historical and Environmental Perspective. Boston: Brill, 2013.

2 articles by Rubie and James Watson from 2007 and 2008. (Rubie Watson also has an earlier [1995?] article that I’ve been having trouble finding).

Other work that has informed my thought process

Campany, Robert Ford. Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China. 1 New edition. Honolulu: Univ of Hawaii Pr, 2009.

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. “The Early Stages in the Development of Descent Group Organization.” In Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000–1940, edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and James L. Watson. Studies on China ; 5. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Nappi, Carla Suzan. The Monkey and the Inkpot : Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009.

And I’m sure lots of others…