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Form & Compass School Feng Shui
Master Yang's principles came to be regarded as the "Form School"
of Feng Shui, which rationalises good or bad sites in terms
of Dragon symbolism. According to this school, good Feng Shui
locations require the presence of the Dragon, and where there
is the true Dragon, there will also be found the White Tiger.
Feng Shui Masters who subscribe to the Form School begin their
search for favourable locations by first searching for the Dragon.
Emphasis was thus put on landforms, shapes of hills and mountains,
waterways, their orientations and directions.
While Dragon symbolism was the principle mainstay of the Form
School, there eventually emerged a second major system that
approached the practice of Feng Shui from quite different perspectives.
This second system laid stress on metaphysical speculations,
using the symbols of the I Ching - or Book of Changes, and the
Trigrams and the Hexagrams - three and six-lined symbols to
calculate good and bad Feng Shui.
The Trigrams were placed around an eight-sided octagonal symbol
called the Pa Kua, and according to where each of these eight
Trigrams were placed, other corresponding attributes and symbols
were further identified. These refer to colours, to different
members of the family, to specific compass directions, to one
of the five elements and to other attributes.
Each of these symbols and attributes were supposed to offer
"clues" for designing homes, for allocating different rooms,
for different purposes and for assigning different members of
the family to different corners of the home in order to maximise
auspicious Feng Shui for the entire family.
This second major system came to be collectively referred to
as the Compass School of Feng Shui, and depending on which branch
of this school is being practised, the calculations took on
different equations and methods.
Certain branches of Compass School also emphasized the influence
of the planets on the quality of locations. In contrast to the
Form School, it assigned only minor importance to landscape
configurations, relying heavily instead on complex calculations
of actual dimensions, compass directions and sectors of main
entrances and important rooms.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, the two
schools had merged completely. Theories of the Form School including
beliefs in Dragon symbolism gained wider acceptability and practice
amongst followers of the Compass School. Today, Feng Shui practitioners
in Hong Kong and Taiwan customarily practise a hazy combination
of both schools.
Between the two schools, the Form School, with its heavy emphasis
on the natural landscape, requires a greater amount of intuitive
insight. It is therefore considered harder to practice even
though the Green Dragon/White Tiger symbolisms are relatively
easy to comprehend. The Compass School method is harder to learn
and its formulae more difficult to grasp, but once mastered,
is considered easier to practice due to its more precise methodologies.
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