An Appreciation of Chinese Geomancy

Andrew L. March

The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Feb., 1968), pp. 253-267.

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An Appreciation of Chinese Geomancy
A N D R E W L. M A R C H
This Chinese superstition, absurd as it is, has not main-
tained itself for a thousand years among a vast civilized
people, a nation whose thinkers and scholars are innumer-
able, without basing itself upon something or other natural
to man and not evidently repugnant to his reason.=

C HINESE geomancy (feng shui) holds that if a man is buried in a properly

sited grave, his descendants will prosper; and that the siting of houses, cities,
and whole regions similarly works good or ill for their inhabitant^.^ Although
taken seriously by many eminent thinkers of traditional China (the philosopher
Chu Hsi, for example), it is likely to impress us today on first encounter as a
baffling and silly mishmash of things better sorted out as physical science, religion,
esthetics, psychology, philosophy, and sociology. Understanding is easier if we can
look on it as first, a kind of integral experience, and second, certain meanings given
to such experience.
Westerners have typically been even less kind than the author of the epigraph:
"a ridiculous caricature of science," a "farrago of ab~urdities,"~ "a perverse applica-
tion of physical and meteorological knowledge'j4 are among the names geomancy
has been called; and "if any one wishes to see to what a howling wilderness of
erratic dogmatism the human mind can arrive, when speculation usurps the place
of science, and theories are reverenced equally with facts, let him endeavour to

Andrew L. March is Assistant Professor of Geography at Columbia University. Part of this research
was done under a grant from the East Asian Institute of Columbia University.
Abbreviations used in the notes:
SKCSTM Ssu &u ch'uan shu tsung mu.
SPPY Ssu pu pei yao.
TLTC Yeh T'ai, T i li ta ch'eng (preface 1696).
TSCC Ch'in ting ku chin t'u shu chi ch'eng (Tsung-li Ya-men ed., 1890).
References are to section 17, I shu tien.
F.S.T., "Feng-Shui," Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 29, March 1874, 347. F.S.T. is identified as Storrs
Turner by Edwin Joshua Dukes in his article "Feng-Shui" in James Hastings, ed., Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics, Vol. 5 (New York, 1g14), 833-35.
2 "Geomancy" translates feng shui, t a n yii, or even ti li which ordinarily corresponds to "geography."
It is not the "geomancy" of the Oxford English Dictionary (Vol. 4, Oxford, 1933): "The art of
divination by means of signs derived from the earth, as by the figure assumed by a handful of earth
thrown down upon some surface. ... Hence, usually, divination by means of lines or figures formed
by jotting down on paper a number of dots at random." This latter is evidently the sense in which
it is understood by Mary Danielli in her article "The Geomancer in China, with some Reference to
Geomancy as Observed in Madagascar," Folklore, Vol. 63, December 1952, 204-26, and in general
anthropological studies like Robert Jaulin, La Gkmancie: Analyse Formelle, Cahiers de I'Homme, n.s.
No. 4 (Paris [Mouton], 1966). Charles Gutzlaff (China Opened, revised by Andrew Reed, London,
1838, Vol. I, 501) calls geomancers "necromancers."
8 J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, Vol. 3 (Leiden, 1897), 938.

4George Sarton, Introduction to the History o f Science, Vol. I (Baltimore, 1gz7), 345.

253
 ANDREW L. MARCH
fathom even the elementary principles of that abyss of insane vagaries, the science
of F e n g - S h ~ i . " ~
Such animus arose from the belief that geomancy was to blame for difficulties
in promoting, in China, Christianity and trade and the "gospel of natural sci-
ence"' which served both. Thus Dukes in unwitting defense writes
The making of a path or building of a house is not, therefore, a matter in which
the workman or his employer alone is concerned. Every one who lives within
sight of it, and every spirit whose bones respose in a grave near it, is intensely
interested in the questions where and in what style that house or road is going to
be made. It will suggest itself at once to the reader that if we ignorant European
outsiders were to live where we choose in China, to build as we like, to make roads
and railways, to erect telegraph posts, to quarry stone wherever we saw any to
our fancy, to delve recklessly into the bowels of the earth for coal, we should, in the
opinion of the Chinese, be like 'a maniac scattering dust' and 'a fury slinging
flame.' We should put steeples to our churches and tall chimneys to our factories,
and in so doing commit the unpardonable crime of upsetting the serenity of the
spirit-world. No vengeance would be too dire to execute upon the rash mortal
who could disregard the interest of his fellow-creatures in such a manner.7
A few Westerners were able to drop at least their scorn, if not their patronizing
tone, and find a good word to say of geomancy; thus, besides F.S.T., Johnson
("however obscure may be these germs of science, they are more obvious than in
the mythologies of the more poetic Greeks and Jews")' and Eitel ("would God,
that our own men of science had preserved in their observatories, laboratories and
lecture-rooms that same child-like reverence ..
.")? Lately Needham and Freed-
man, each from his own angle, have shown more tolerance and genuine interest.
But even scoffers noticed that geomantically chosen sites were attractive.

6Edwin Joshua Dukes, Everyday Life in China (London, 1885), p. 145 (in the chapter "Feng-shui"
the Biggest of all Bugbears," pp. 145-59). Some other Western writings on geomancy are J. Dyer Ball,
"Geomancy, or Fung-shui," in his Things Chinese, 4th ed. (London, rgoq), pp. 312-15; Hubrig, "Fung
Schui oder chinesische Geomantie" (Vortrag), Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fur Anthropologie,
Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (appended to Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, Vol. 11, 1879), 34-43; B. C .
Henry, The Cross and the Dragon (London, 1885?), pp. 160-78; Jules Regnault, "RBle du Foung-choei et
de la Sorcellerie dans la vie p r i d e et publique des Jaunes," Revue Politique et Parlementaire, Vol. 46,
No. 137, November 10, 1905, 353-73; E. J. Eitel, Fing-Shui, Principles of the Natural Science of the
Chinese (Hong Kong, 1873); Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2 (Cambridge,
1956), 359-63, and Vol. 4:1 (Cambridge, 1962), Section 26 (i), passim: Maurice Freedman, Chinese
Lineage and Society, London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 33 (Lon-
don, 1966), pp. 118-54; Stephan D. R. Feuchtwang, "An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese
Geomancy," unpublished M. A. thesis, University of London, 1965 (I saw this too late to make full use
of it); J. J. M. de Groot, Universismus (Berlin, 1918), pp. 364-84; John Thomson, T h e Land and the
People of China (London, New York, 1876), pp. 209-15; Samuel Johnson, Oriental Religions and their
Relation to Universal Religion (Boston, 1877), pp. 715-17; G. Willoughby-Meade, Chinese Ghouls and
Goblins (London, 1928), pp. 274-91; W. E. Soothill, T h e Three Religions of China (London, New
York, Toronto, 3rd ed. 1930), pp. 163-68; T. R. Jernigan, China in Law and Commerce (New York,
London, ~ g o g ) ,pp. 264-66; Henry DorC, Researches into Chinese Superstitions, trans. by M. Kennelly,
Part I, Vol. 4 (Shanghai, 1922), 402-16; W. J. Clennell, T h e Historical Development of Religion in
China (New York, 1917)~pp. 71-78.
6 Dukes, Eueryday Life, p. 159.
7 Ibid., pp. 151-52.
8 Johnson, op. cit., p. 717.
9 Eitel, op. cit., p. 7. Also p. 82: "There is one truth in Feng-shui.. .. It is the recognition of the
uniformity and universality of the operation of natural laws."
CHINESE GEOMANCY 255
In some mountain valley the traveller remarks a handsome, well kept tomb of a
horse-shoe shape, resting against the side of a rounded hill, backed by loftier
heights and flanked by declivities gently falling on either hand into the plain,
over which a broad and silvery stream meanders. The beauty and peacefulness of
the retired scene impresses his mind and he muses half-aloud: 'There must be
poetry in the Chinese soul after all. Were I a native of the land, just such a spot
would I select for my last resting-place, and here, when my sorrowing friends
should come to mourn my loss, the soothing influence of nature's everlasting
strength and calm would breathe an undefined sense of consolation to their
breasts.' But his guide annihilates his kindling sympathies by the information that
neither affection nor poetry, but Feng-Shui fixed upon this hillside for the grave.1°
I n a similar vein, d e Groot recounts the disbelief of the Chinese in Westerners'
claims to know nothing of geomancy: the foreign cemetery on Kulangsu Island
at Amoy was in an excellent site, walled at the back and sides and open i n front
"exactly as if it were a good Chinese gravev-"in short, they ask, how can for-
eigners pretend to know nothing of Feng-shui, when we ourselves see how anxious
they are to accumulate their dead in that .. .
plot which combines everything re-
quired for a perfect Fung-shui ...
?"I1 Europeans in China were, in fact, capable
of describing their o w n graves i n words that with changes i n the technical ter-
minology might almost pass for geomancy:
The soil of Canton is enriched by the dust of scores of those [missionaries] who
have fallen in the conflict. In the little cemetery to the east of the city is the sacred
spot where the gleaming marble or the modest granite tells of those who have sunk
beneath the burden and heat of the day, and found a resting-place in that distant
land. ... On that lonely hillside, shaded by groves of the feathery bamboo, sur-
rounded by the graves of their Chinese fellow-Christians, they lie in the hope of a
glorious resurrection .. .
their dust commingling with the soil, their words sunk
deep in many hearts, their books as living witnesses, and their spirits in the blessed
companionship of the just, all unite in giving permanence to the work to which
their lives were freely devoted, and continue as pledges of the glorious triumphs
of the Cross of Christ over the wide dominions of the Dragon.12
T h e sacred spot, its character deriving from its setting in the landscape, and the
expectation that the graves somehow augur success for the work of those who thus
emotionally affirm their solidarity with these dead-the man who could write
such words, one would think, must have a good deal of spontaneous understanding
for geomancy. But earlier in the same book he has called it "grossest error" and rec-
ommended as a n antidote "Christian science."13 T h e Europeans' detestation of
geomancy must have arisen not only from the obstacles it opposed to their ac-
tivities, but also from their own inability wholly to disbelieve it-they shared the
experience but the meaning seemed a parody of their own practice.14

lo F.S.T.,op. cit., p. 338.

11de Groot, Religious System, pp. 1054-55; cf. Eitel, op. cit., pp. 3-4: a similar observation about

Hong Kong.
l2Henry, op. cit., pp. 220-21.
18 Ibid., p. 178.
14Clennell believed the experience was more than just Chinese, e.g.: "I lately came across the
suggestion that much of the British objection to the making of the proposed Channel Tunnel is
essentially due to a belief in Fengshui, though we in England have not learned to call it by that name.
256 ANDREW L. MARCH
A n immediate experience of the fitness of a site, especially a gravesite: this is
the center of geomantic thinking. I n whatever roundabout terms it is explained,
geomancy, like alchemy, is concerned with what we would dualize as the psychic
properties of the material world?6 One cannot make sense of it by regarding it as
just a defective natural science, a kind of superstitious fortune-telling, or a n ad-
junct of social organization, although it undoubtedly does have all these aspects.

Certain places in the landscape, according to geomantic theory, have life

breath (sheng ch'i), and the geomancer's whole art is to discover such places and
to ascertain their special individual qualities. "Burying is catching life breath"
(ch'eng sheng ch'i).la "If a geomancer can recognize life breath, that is all there is
to geomancy."17 "Thus its books are ever more numerous and its procedures
ever more abstruse, but these three words [ch'eng sheng ch'i] suffice to cover its
whole meaning."18 What are we to make of this concept? T o imagine it as a
kind of physical energy is misleading because it at once raises the question of
whether life breath has the sort of objective existence which we, with our in-
struments, attribute to electricity or magnetism; finding that it apparently does not,
we are obliged to call it a fiction and those who believe it fakes or fools. W e do
better to think of the metaphorical use, in criticism of painting or architecture, of
terms like mass, movement, and rhythm. But "life breath" is not intended as
metaphor.
T h e hills and ridges that provide the principal clues to where the breath may
be found are called "dragons."
The beginning and end of geomancy is nothing more than the layout of mountain
ridges, and all the authorities are alike in referring to them as dragons. Why is
this? Because none but the magic dragon can lie low or fly, and be big or small;
and the earth's forms may rise to mountain heights or fall away to deep springs;
they open wide to cover counties and to extend through subprefectures; they con-
tract and are like a thread or a string. Is this not like a dragon? The magic dragon
writhes and changes, unknowable in its subtle origins; and mountain ridges that
have life breath will start to run east then suddenly turn west, or begin to run
south then suddenly head north; you cannot pin them down--off they go in all
directions. Surely nothing but the writhings of the magic dragon is an adequate
figure of the mountain ridges' permutations. What does not resemble the permuta-
tions of the magic dragon does not realize the subtle geomantic essence. Therefore

Britain would, it was maintained, be just as safe with the tunnel as far as actual danger of attack
goes, but she would lose the propitious Ftngshui that comes of insularity" (op. cit., pp. 75-76). If the
reader still finds geomancy far-out and exotic, a look at Jessica Mitford's American Way of Death
(New York, 1963), will make it seem tame.
16 In geomancy, as in alchemy, a main purpose is to achieve certain results in the psyche, and
hence material things are evaluated above all in terms of their psychological properties. See C. G. Jung,
Psychologie und Alchemic, Psychologische Abhandlungen, Vol. 5 (Zurich, 1944) esp. 331 B. Similar
ideas are developed in works of Gaston Bachelard such as La Terre et les Reveries de la Volontk (Paris,
1 9 5 8 ) ~and La Terre et Ics Reveries du Repos (Paris, 1948). Chinese alchemy also has this psychological
aspect: see Arthur Waley, "Notes on Chinese Alchemy," Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies,
London, Vol. 6, pt. I (1g30), 1-24.
l 6 K u o P'u, Tsang J u , TSCC 17.665.la. Principles for buildings are about the same as for burial;
see TLTC, ts'e 3.32a-b.
11 TLTC, ts'e I.zza.
18 Chao Fang, Tsang shu wen ta, TSCC 1 7 . 6 8 0 .a.~

~
CHINESE GEOMANCY 257
it is said: if it has permutations, call it dragon; if it has none, call it barren
mountain.le

Like life breath, the protean "dragon" means what feels lively and changeful i n
landscape. I t is not actual changes of landscape things i n time (although ge-
omancers did reckon with these),2O but the inexhaustible succession of diverse
impressions the mind experiences in landscape.
But within the variety there are regular patterns one can become familiar with.

The hills, with their dragons in transit and their coalescing sites, make certain
definite patterns. Nowadays everyone who speaks of the geomantic forms of hills
says 'a thousand changes, ten thousand permutations.' Indeed, these thousand
changes and ten thousand permutations of dragons and sites are like the differences
among human minds and faces. But although people's minds do differ, still in
broad terms they are not so far apart in that they like wealth, honor, ease, and
congeniality, and dislike poverty, low position, exertion, and strangeness. Faces
are indeed unlike, but with eyebrows above eyes, nose in the middle and ears at the
sides, forehead high and mouth low, in broad outline they are not different
either. Thus, even if only touching it in the dark, one would know a human (face);
and even studying it from a thousand miles off, one can tell a mind is human.-
So also with the permutations of dragons and sites: unlike in detail, they are alike
in their general structures. If in the absence of definite patterns one were to hunt
the hills and seek the dragon, how could even an earthly immortal be clear in his
understanding and without

O n the largest scale, the pattern reaches beyond the circle of immediate experience,
like seeing one end of a bridge in the fog. China's three great primary dragons,
divided by the Yellow River and the Yangtze, have their origin in the mountains
of Central Asia, in common with the world's other main mountain systems.22 T h e
main dragons divide and subdivide into lower-order trunks (.t -a n.) and branches
(chih), which affect progressively smaller areas a n d fewer people, a n d are less and
less potent.23
Wherever people dwell is a site (chai). ...
If the site at which a man makes his
family home is well set, the family has generations of good fortune; if not, the
..
family declines. . From military district and nation, down through subprefecture,
commandery, county, and municipality to villages, wards, public buildings, blocks,

l9 Shen Hao, Liu-pu Shen Hsin-chou hsien sheng ti hsueh (preface 1652) (Shanghai, 1914). 1.5ga;
this edition by the Shanghai Chin chang t'u shu chii. For particularly hard passages I have referred also
to another edition purporting to date from 1713. The two differ quite considerably.
20 See de Groot, Religious System, p. 1015; in the TSCC, 17.654.32a~ 17.658.26b~ 17.680.4b (tsa lu).
The landscape's geomantic characteristics may change as an unintended result of habitation. Thus a
mountainous area where most of the peaks have the Fire shape does not naturally afford good sites;
however, "if hill farmers dig and cultivate and settle there, there they are obliged to bury their dead.
But after they have made fields, there are low and flat places; and low means Water, flat means
Earth: there is Earth to screen from the Fire and Water to rule the F i e . Hence they do find suitable
grave and house sites" (Shen, op. cit., 1.zra).
z1 TLTC, ts'e z.7ga-b.
22 The best summary and critique of this theory of mountains is in Chang Huang, T u shu pien
(completed in 1577)~ch. 30.
28 Cf. de Groot, Religious System, p. 1009; Freedman, op. cd., p. 138.
258 ANDREW L. MARCH
and even the habitations of solitary hermits in the hills-all these are examples
(of geomantic sites) .24
Great trunks are the dragons of commanderies and counties, generals and min-
. ..
isters. (Beyond the place where branches have separated off) the trunk, if it has
a structure, may still yield a second or third rank, as may be distinguished ac-
cording to the height of the structure. As for minor branches, they are good only
for wealth and progeny.25

I n transit such a dragon (hsing lung) is of no use; it must stop and coalesce
(chieh) at a stream junction, forming a situation (chii) with the local eminences
(sha, lit. "sands") and waters, within which a site (hsiieh) may be found. T h e
terrain around a site may be like the back and arms of a chair, or may seem to
hold the grave in its embrace. A great amount of literature exists on the in-
terpretation of all these features in terms deriving ultimately from astrology, the
Five Elements, and Yin-Yang theory. With all their inconsistencies, a common
message of these writings is that no detail is too trivial to be a part of the geomantic
experience. I n general, montony is, here too, to be avoided. Ideally shapes represent-
ing each of the Five Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water) should be present
(Fig. I), and a site should stand out against the prevailing character of the landscape.

Wood Fire Earth Metal Water

Fig. I. Type shapes of the Five Elements

On a rock hill you must take an earthy site; on an earth hill you must take a
rocky site. Where it is confined, take an open place; where it is open, take a con-
fined place. On a prominence, take the flat; where it is flat, take the prominent.
Where strong comes, take weak; where weak comes, take strong. Where there are
many hills, emphasize water; where there is much water, emphasize hills. .26 ..
T h e sexual connotation of Yin-Yang theory often becomes explicit, and the feeling
of liveliness and diversity in the landscape is represented as the coupling of male
and female elements.
'Situation' is the general term for dragon, site, eminences, and waters. Essentially,
when mountain and water join, coupling as male and female, they blend and form
a situation. Mountain and water are male and female. ...
If the dragon curls
left, the water has to curl right; if the dragon curls right, the water has to curl
left; the two embrace each other, and only then does the site coalesce.27
In geomancy, the primary interpretation is sexual, and 'male' and 'female' apply

24 Huang ti chai ching, TSCC 17.651.1a-b.

25 TLTC, ts'e 1.1zb.
2eShanghai hsing hsiang yen chiu she, ed., Hsing ming fmg shui m i ch'uan (T'ai-chung, 1 9 5 7 ) ~
P. 63.
27 TLTC, ts'e I .grr.
CHINESE GEOMANCY

to many things. ...

If the female and male do not meet, then yin and yang do not
mate, and the place is one-sidedly yin or yang and lacks life breath.28
Thus life breath may be a direct expression of love and procreation. By burying or
building at such a privileged site, a man engrafts himself as adoptive child of po-
tent natural couples who can ensure him wealth, success, and a numerous de-
scent. This is as much as to say, at the least, that geomancy helps shape his own
desire toward care and concern for these goals.
Writers on geomancy liked to emphasize the arduousness of the field work
indispensable for a sound grasp of the subject or for the proper evaluation of a site.
"Climb the heights, look into the depths, bear hunger and thirst and every dis-
comfort," Shen Hao told Chiang Jui, who had asked to be his disciple, "and you may
hope to acquire a rough elementary understanding. For the fine points, you must
quite emaciate yourself."29 Education of the eye and the sentiments, familiarization
with the local terrain, and at the same time an initiation, this discipline is an indi-
cation of the primary place of immediate experience in geomancy. In the last in-
stance, all that counts is how a site feels, the quality of blend of psyche and land-
scape; if one can feel life breath directly, all else is superfluous.
[What] life breath [is] cannot be conveyed in words, but only recognized by the
eye. If you can recognize life breath, then you need not recognize the stars
[shapes], nor analyze the branches and the trunks, nor investigate the site con-
ditions, nor distinguish the eminences and the waters, yet when you pick a site for
someone, it will always be right-how is this? It is because all the multifarious
methods were devised for no other purpose than to seek out life breath; when life
breath is found, there is no longer the least need to discuss the methods. As I once
stated, the concept of life breath is like a Buddhist monk with his Ch'an [Zen]:
go right at it with a will, get the whole secret of Buddhism [ ? I , and there is no
need to indite one further word.30
And the authentic site-"another world"-can finally be described only in terms
of pure experience.
.
At a true site . . there is a touch of magic light. How so, magic? it can be under-
stood intuitively, but not conveyed in words. The hills are fair, the waters fine, the
sun handsome, the breeze mild; and the sky has a new light: another world.
Amid confusion, peace; amid peace, a festive air. Upon coming into its presence,
one's eyes are opened; if one sits or lies, one's heart is joyful. Here the breath
gathers, and the essence collects. Light shines in the middle, and magic goes out
on all sides. Above or below, to right or left, it is not thus. No greater than a finger,
no more than a spoonful; like a dewdrop, like a pearl, like the moon through a
crack, like the reflection in a mirror. Play with it, and it is as if you can catch it; put
it off, and it cannot be got rid of. Try to understand! it is hard to describeF1
Here is the presence of a true site, the experience to which all geomancy's tech-
28 TLTC, ts'e n.74b. There was controversy over whar actual landscape features were yin and what
yang; see TLTC, ts'e 1.19b A.
2 9 Shen, op. cit., Introduction nb. A filial son, however, should not endanger himself by climbing the
heights and looking into the depths, according to Li chi, ch'ii li 1.4b (SPPY Vol. 6). Elsewhere Shen
speaks of packing a lunch for such excursions (op. cit., 1.5ga).
80 TLTC, ts'e 1.21b.

81 Shen, op. cit., 2.2gb.

 ANDREW L. MARCH
niques, categories, and rationalizations are subordinate and in the light of which
alone they begin to be intelligible. Indeed, it is described in terms so strong that it
can itself be the geomancer's sufficient goal, and the alleged ulterior purpose of
making good luck only an excuse.

T h e above does not apply equally to all geomancy, from its origins to the
present, but more particularly to its later development and its literary side. T h e
origins are vague. According to de Groot the "elementary principles were ...
practically applied" already in the Chou while Needham says that
"there can be little doubt but that it was something which developed during the
Warring States period at the time of the schools of philosophical magic when Tsou
Yen was flourishing .. .
in the H a n the system was well under construction its ...
consolidation took place in the San Kuo period.''33 Burial geomancy seems to have
arisen later than the geomancy of city and building sites. T h e eighteenth-century
Ssu y u ch'iian shu tsung mu states:

The provenance of the theory of gravesites is unknown. In the Chou &an, under
the duties both of Tombs Officer and of Graves Administrator, it is stated that bur-
ials are to be [situated] according to kinship. This is clear proof that down through
the Chou dynasty gravesites were not geomantically selected. Not until the Bibli-
ographic Treatise [ch. 301 of the Han History under 'Writers on the Methods of
Forms' [hsing fa chia], do we find a 'Landforms for Palaces and Residences'
[Kung chai ti hsing], which is listed among the books on physiognomy and div-
ination by objects. Hence this art had its earliest beginnings in the Han dynasty;
but there is still no special mention of burial methods. In the biography of Yiian
An [d. A. D. 921 in the Latter Hun History [ch. 751 it is recorded that upon his
father's death An was making inquires seeking a burial place. On the road he met
three scholars who pointed out a place that should produce high rank. An took
their advice, and hence his descendants had generations of honor and prosperity.
This means that the art flourished and spread from the Eastern Han on.34

Earlier evidence is fragmentary and seems to show merely the existence of a

diffuse vitalism, or some other element of thought later taken up by geomancy.
For example, the Ch'in general Meng T'ien, who had directed the construction of
the Great Wall at the end of the third century B.C., on being informed of a sen-
tence of death against him,
sighed bitterly and said, 'What is my guilt before Heaven, that I must die for no
crime?' Then after a pause he said gravely, 'I am guilty, and assuredly should die.
From Lin-t'ao all the way to Liao-tung, a moated wall of more than ~o,oooli; in
the course of this [work] I cannot have avoided cutting through the earth's

32 I. e., before 255 B.C. Religious System, p. 983.

33 Op. cit., Vo1. 4:1, 240. TSOU Yen flourished in the 4th or 3rd century B.C. Han: 206 B.C.-221 A.D.;

San Kuo: 222-265 A.D. Cf. Eitel, op. cit., p. 64: "In short, the elementary principles of Feng-shui
appear to have been practised centuries before Confucius, unconsciously, as it were, by superstitious
people. But there is nothing to prove that Feng-shui was reduced to a science, that it was practised
methodically as a profession."
84 Ch. 109, under Tsang shu; cf. ibid. under Chai ching. The Chou kuan (i.e., Chou li) reference is
to ch. zz.Ia, zb (SPPY Vol. 4).
CHINESE GEOMANCY

veins [or ridges: ti ma]: this is my guilt.' And he swallowed poison, killing him-
~elf.~B

Even the supposed attack o n geomancy i n the Lun heng of W a n g Ch'ung (82 or
83 A.D.) actually refers to chronomancy; on the other hand, if geomancy had
had any importance at that time, one would expect W a n g Ch'ung to have given
it his attention.a6
I n any event, the pivotal figure in the development of geomancy i n anything
approaching its modern form seems to have been K u o P'u ( ~ ~ 6 - ~ 2 4 )a:n~d after
him two principal schools emerged. T h e Ming dynasty writer W a n g W e i sum-
marizes the history as follows:
The theories of the geomancers have their sources in the ancient Yin-Yang school.
Although the ancients in establishing their cities and erecting their buildings al-
ways selected the sites (geomantically), the art of selecting burial sites originated
with the Burial Book [Tsang shu] in 20 parts, written by Kuo P'u of the Chin
dynasty. ...In later times those who practised the art divided into two schools.
One is called the Ancestral Hall method [tsung miao chih fa, hereafter 'Direc-
tions']. It began in Fukien, and its origins go far back; with Wang Chi of the
Sung dynasty it gained currency. Its theory emphasizes the Planets and the Tri-
grams; a yang hill should face in a yang direction, a yin hill in a yin direction, so
they are not at odds. Exclusive reliance is put on the Eight Trigrams and the Five
Planets, which are used to determine the principles [according to which the Five
Elements and the things associated with them] generate and destroy [each other].
The art is still preserved in Chekiang, but very few people employ it.
The other is called the Kiangsi method [hereafter 'Shapes']. It started with
Yang Yiin-sung and Tseng Wen-ti of Kan-chou, and its doctrine was refined es-
pecially by Lai Ta-yu and Hsieh Tzu-i. Its theory emphasizes landforms and ter-
rains [hsing shih], taking them from where they arise to where they terminate,
and thereby determining position and orientation. [Practitioners] give their whole
attention to the mutual appropriateness of dragons, sites, eminences, and waters,
obstinately refusing to discuss anything else. Nowadays, south of the Yangtze,
everyone follows it.
Although these two schools differ, they are both based on Kuo [ P ' U ] . ~ ~
T h e first (also called the Min school) attached much importance to the compass,
of whose history Needham says, "Making a guess in the light of all the evidence

S5 Shih chi, 88.5a. The author, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, thought that his guilt was rather that he had been
indifferent to the sufferings of the people (ibid., gb).
36 Lun heng, 24.12a, b (SPPY Vol. 138); the chan she shih che is for some reason translated as
"geomancers" in A. Forke, Lun H&g, Vol. I (Shanghai, London, and Leipzig, 1907), 531; cf. Needham,
op. cit., Vol. 2, 359 and 377; Vol. 4:1, 240. Other early references collected by Needham and by de
Groot (Religious System, Vol. 3, 994 ff.) do not contradict the opinions of SKCSTM or of Wang Wei
(see below). Revelant passages not mentioned by them are Huai nun tzu 4.5ab; Po w u chih I . 3a; and
the comments of Cheng and Chia in Chou li chu su 26.12b (all SPPY). Yin-Yang and Five-Element theory,
astrology, and the philosophy of organism in general (Needham, op. cit., Vol. 2, 280-81 et al.) all have
their own histories which interweave and overlap with geomancy's.
87 Scholar, poet, master of occult arts. Besides writing the Burial Book (see below), he annotated the
dictionary Erh ya, the Shun hai ching, and other works.
8s Wang Wei, Ch'ing yen ts'ung lu, pp. 7b-8a (in Pai ling hsiieh shan, ts'e 3); quoted in part in
SKCSTM, 109, under Tsang shu. On the two schools, see also de Groot, Religious System, Vol. 3, 1006-09;
Needham, op. cit., Vol. 4:1, 242; and Eitel, op. cit., p. 77.
 ANDREW L. MARCH
one might say that the magnetized needle was probably used for geomancy on a n
increasingly widespread scale during the Sui, T h a n g a n d Wu T a i periods, not
finding application at sea until the beginning of the Sung."3D T h e compass a t a site
is oriented to the magnetic meridian, and bearings are taken on local features
across a number of concentric circles carrying the wind-rose, the Eight Trigrams,
the Twenty-eight Lunar Mansions, a n d other symbols. This school is also called
Li ch1i,40according to Shen Hao, who has little good to say of it.

There have since appeared in the world eyeless ones, who climb and gaze out hut
cannot tell departing from approaching [dragons, or waters]; who go up and go
down but do not know the fronts [of landforms] from their backs. They see only
the confused motions of the compass needle, think it a marvellous object and deify
it... . They say: I remember clearly, there is no need to climb mountains, we can
sit down and discuss geomancy. These are called the Directionists [Fang wei chia].
Each makes his own theories [ ? I . From the T a n g dynasty to the present there
has been a great ruck of them. .. .
Those who first made up the Planets and Trigrams theories, and talked of Di-
rections, were deluded men; others after them perpetuated the theories. As the then
masters [of geomancy] refuted them with might and main, they dissembled by giv-
ing themselves the name of LI ch'i chia; and those who heard their theories sup-
posed that what was being imparted was the li [principle] and ch'z [breath, material
force] [of the Neo-Confucians]-which, however, it is not. I know of no 'princi-
ple' if one departs from shapes [hsing], nor any 'breath' if one discards terrain
[shih]. But climbing is laborious, and you cannot let someone else go and look in
your stead; whereas sitting and talking is easy, and the compass is convenient to
handle--comfortable for the consultant, comfortable for the client. This is why
those who talk of directions and li ch'i have multiplied and have written book after
book. Some claim the authority of the 'Appended Judgements' of the Book of
Changes; some try to cover with talk of (the numerological diagrams) H o and
Lo, and some, wishing to cover up even more, talk of the Supreme Ultimate and
the Previous Heaven; this is the theory of the Original Mother's Original Mother.
They particularly like to discuss flat or wet country; in hilly places the landforms
stand out clearly and perhaps people will not listen to them.
But if you denounce heterodoxy without knowing its rationale, it can argue
against you, so you must know all twenty-four authorities' Yin-Yangs and Five-
Elements before your refutation will succeed. Strong-minded and impatient people
usually just decide anyhow, knowing nothing, and heedless people also dislike the
trouble of climbing mountains and enjoy the ease of sitting and talking. This is
why the words of the Directionists or L i ch'i chia take fresh life each day and
proliferate more each month. Those struck by the poison are like smoke dissipated
and fire extinguished, and never have a chance to reason out the source of their mis-
fortunes. ... I grieve that the gentry will not interest themselves in (geomantic)

88 op. dt., v01. 4:I, 281.

4'3111 describing the "Ancestral Hall" method, Wang Wei says "a yang hill should face in a yang
direction, a yin hill in a yin direction." These words appear also in the Ch'ing nang hsii (in Chiang Kuo,
ed., Ti li cheng tsung [preface 18141, Hsin-chu, 1960, 5.3b), a work which (together with a Ch'ing
sang ao yu) the Ssu i('u ch'tian shu chien ming m u lu (Shih chieh ed., 11.421) says is the source of the
Li ch'i school; however, this work is associated with Tseng Wen-ti, who is supposed to belong to the
Shapes school. The Tz'u yuan dictionary, under 1i ch'i, says this is another name for the school of geo-
mancy specializing in star-symbols and directions.
CHINESE GEOMANCY
lore, but put their trust in rustic masters and so imperil their parents and prepare
disaster for their p o ~ t e r i t y . ~ ~

So the emphasis on direct experience-the immediate response to the whole

feeling of a place-belongs especially to the Shapes school, which seems to have
been the more esthetic, prestigious, and orthodoxP2 The Directions school may be
more magical and superstitious but at the same time, relying less on subjective
experience and more on the indications of the compass, it is more proto-scientific
in the Western sense: the principles may be occult, but the application could be
more nearly uniform and objectiveP3 Directions, I suspect, could recommend more
places than met the exacting requirements of Shapes, and hence may have been
more practical for ordinary poor ~eople.In Shapes, most people have to make do
with inferior sites. Thus Shen says that the descendants of people buried at sites
whose shapes are pure Earth (broad and flat) are stupid and fit only for farming;44
nonetheless these sites are to be used:
[The form of] Earth by itself has no creative liveliness, and strictly speaking
should not be used. But there are multitudes of people; how should they all conform
to the principles of geomancy? and the Earth form is level and solid; with Earth, if
a situation is found, one is assured of descendants and property. So even populations
of thousands and tens of thousands are not afflicted by want of burial places,
since the great earth is mostly Earth.45

Different though the outlooks of the two schools are, however, there came to be
much synthesis, or confusion, between themPe

The geomancy of burial considers it appropriate to superimpose two senti-

ments. One is the feeling at a true site of life breath and "another world," already
discussed; the other is the emotion directed to the body of a dead parent. So much
need mean only that one tries to bury a parent in a landscape of some charm. It
seems a long step to the mantic part of geomancy: the theory that by combining
objects in this way, one not only molds one's psyche, but also produces continuing
effects in the external material world; that parents' gravesites will determine
whether a whole lineage, for an indefinite number of generations, shall enjoy long
life, wealth, rank, and posterity. Is there some out-and-out magic in even the most
enlightened geomancy of the Shapes school?
It must really work in some circumstances."7 The decision on the part of a
family to take pains and spend money to find a first-rate gravesite is itself a sign

(Ishen, op. cit., 2.88b, 8gb.

d2 Cf. de Groot, Religious System, Vol. 3, 1008: "In the mountainous southern provinces, the School
of Forms obviously predominates. Even in Fuhkien no geomancers are so highly esteemed as those
who pretend to exercise their vocation in strict accordance with the Kiangsi method. . . ."
43Cf. Chao Fang, Tsang shu wen ta, TSCC 17.680.23a: "In Shapes the principles are clear but the
...
practice is difficult with Directions the principles are obscure but the practice is easy."
44 Shen, op. cit., 1.5ob.
45 lbid., I .26b.
46de Groot, Religious System, Vol. 3, 1008; the mixing is exemplified in Shanghai hsing hsiang yen
chiu she, op. cit., a short popular manual of geomancy and fortune-telling; and in Chiang Kuo, op. cit.,
5.1b, and in Chiang's inclusion, in this collection, of works belonging to both schools.
47 Cf. Freedman, op. d., p. 125.
 ANDREW L. MARCH
to themselves and their neighbors that they are ambitious and confident. Such a
gesture can arouse and concentrate their energies, embody their commitment to
the collective good of the lineage, and bind them together by an indivisible in-
vestment in their common future. Although some may have thought of it as a
kind of lottery, and been merely beguiled and entertained by hopes of big winnings,
still in a society where the average life was one of low status and hard work with
small practical chance of change, geomancy must also have helped many families
to believe against all odds that things might improve, and so to function more ef-
fectively as a harmonious group (although it could also lead to quarrels and law-
suits). Moreover, the disposal of a parent's dead body could be on the one hand a
symptom, on the other a creator, of a fundamental personal life-outlook. It is not
paradoxical to bury at a place where life breath is concentrated, because this kind
of care and respect for the dead is not (or need not be) "ancestor worship" in the
sense of fear or adoration of the dead;4s on the contrary, it rather indicates an
attitude of respect for life and devotion to human undertakings. Hence geomantic
burial must make a self-fulfilling prophecy, and tend, in actual fact, to stack the
cards in favor of the descendants. There is no need to suppose that such an ex-
planation is merely a modern gimmick, a leaning over backwards to be fair. Like
electricity or magnetism, the category "magic" is misleading here; it implies a
dualism of natural/supernatural, or material/ideal, which is strange to geomancy.
Perhaps, then, one may admit that in this very general way geomantic burial
must really have been able to influence the future. But what about specific and de-
tailed prognostications, which abound? For example:
In the previous dynasty there arose a strange man, a commoner, who went up to
the palace and discussed national affairs. He was known for his probity. Subse-
quently rivals by calumny caused his death. His sons and grandsons had some-
thing of his character, and also did well. . . . [Description of the site where this
man's ancestor is buried]; it is firey, and the baleful breath [sha ch'i] is not screened
out. In front it faces a steep bank, which also carries a baleful breath. Hence the
sudden rise, sudden fame, and also sudden death. It behooves the descendants to
think of repairing their inheritan~e.~~

Could some mix of symbolisms, psychologies, sociologies, and self-fulfilling proph-

ecies be cooked up to reconcile any such analysis with real events, without recourse
to "magic" or offense to our everyday understanding of cause and effect? I think
that while we may go some distance along these lines there is an important residue
which eludes our categories and requires us to try to think as if what we separately
call the psychic, the social, and the natural worlds have a mutual coherence not
48Cf. Henry, op. cit., pp. 160-61: ancestral worship (with which geomancy is "inseparably con-
nected") "reduced to its final motive, springs from the fear of the living that the dead will injure
them. ... It terrorizes the living, and presents a picture of the dead at once miserable and hopeless";
de Groot, Religious System, Vol. 3 , 982: geomancy's "first embryo ... grew out of the worship of the
dead, which already in the mist of ages was the religion proper of the Chinese"; also Soothill, op. cit.,
p. 164. My study has been based mostly on rather high-class Iiterary geomancy, and these observers may
well be correct about the practice, even if generalizing too far about the theory. De Groot, although he
does use some literary sources, says, "Every Chinaman being more or less initiated in the secrets of the
system, a practical intercourse with the people is sufficient for a foreigner to gain a tolerably clear idea
of what it is. ,. ." (ibid., p. 939), and calls it "hardly worthy of serious study" (p. 938).
49 Shen, op. cit., I .34b.
 CHINESE GEOMANCY 265
reducible to strict causality. Joseph Needham has been criticized for, in effect,
identifying Western science too &holly with a universal science and forcing tra-
ditional Chinese thought into our mold; thus geomancy and other such arts,
important to many thoughtful Chinese, are to him only pseudo- science^.^' A
contrasting point of view is that Chinese science should be taken more on its own
terms, as being "of synchronistic nature,"51 i.e. founded at least in part on "syn-
chronicity" instead of causality. The concept of synchronicity is an attempt to
take account of the fact that (not only in China) highly improbable meaningful
coincidences do often occur, and a hypothesis that the "meaning" is not merely
psychic and subjective, but somehow also a property of the natural world. Unhap-
pily, apart from the general insight it represents, synchronicity as Jung (its in-
ventor) left it is too vague to be of much service for a nearer understanding of
geomancy, and we still lack the means of reconciling this "meaningful" noncausal
element with our usual habits of thought.
Such questions arose also in Chinese controversies over geomancy, but with
more of an eye to ethics. Detractors argued that filiality toward the dead is an
extension of filiality toward the living, and is satisfied when the parent's body is
laid peacefully to rest; a wholly different and improper attitude is displayed when
the body is manipulated to bring luck to the survivor^.^^ Shen's answer is that
ancestors and descendants do nothave opposed interests-they are of one mind in
their concern for the lineage, and the buried ancestor is only too delighted if the
happy placement of his remains can bring prosperity to the family.63
The gravest philosophical objection to geomancy was, similarly, that it lacked
filial piety toward Heaven with its belief that man can make his own destiny by
manipulating the blind natural forces whose evolutions should be left to Heaven.
"Death and life have a doom, wealth and honor are from Heaven," says Con-
f u c i ~ s but
; ~ ~according to the Burial Book one can "snatch spiritual efficacy" and
"alter Heaven's doom" (to shen kung, kai t'ien ming).66
Now the permutations of flourishing and failing, dissolution and growth are all
determined, and unalterable even by the most sagely wisdom and skilled effort.
What they are is Heaven's dooms and the unfathomable operation of a spiritual
efficacy. Multitudes of latter-day philosophers and scholars have given themselves to
unorthodox theories and bizarre speculations, yet none has been too bold as to deny
this. But the Burial Book alone says, spiritual efficacy can be snatched, ~eaven;s
5oManfred Porkert, "Wissenschaftliches Denken im Alten China-Das System der energischen
Beziehungen," Antaios, Vol. 2, 1961, 533. Cf. Needham, op. cit., Vol. 3, 448-49. Cheng Yiieh ( t z u :
Man-ch'ing) of New York similarly criticizes Fung Yu-Ian's Western approach to Chinese philosophy in
Fung's Chung kuo che hsueh shih (Shanghai, 1931ff), arguing that "philosophy" is simply not the same
thing as the che of che hsueh or Chinese philosophy.
61Porkert, lor. cit. C. G Jung writes on synchronicity in his commentary to Richard Wilhelm, trans.,
The Serret o f the Golden Flower (English trans. by Cary F. Baynes) (London, 6th impression 1 9 4 5 ) ~
pp. 142ff; "Uber Synchronizitat," Eranos lahrbuch, Vol. 20 (1952), 271-84; The Structure and Dynamics
of the Psyche (English trans. by R. F. C. Hull), Collected Works, Vol. 8 (London, 1 9 5 5 ) ~417-531.
62 Arguments against geomancy are collected in the TSCC; see especially Chao Fang, Tsang shu
wen ta: Lo Yii-ch'en, Pien huo lun; and Hsiang Ch'iao, Feng shui pien; all are in 17.680. de Groot
(Religious System, Vol. 3, 1021-26) translates a long attack on geomancy by Ssu-ma Kuang. It was
criticized also because it did not work, and because of the expenses and quarrels it led to.
63 Shen, op. cit., Author's preface, rb; cf. also 1.35a.
54 Analects, 12.5.
56 TSCC 17-665.3a.
 ANDREW L. MARCH
doom can be altered. What an imposition on Heaven and the spirits, slander of
the Creator, and lie to the people!56

But to some such critics the difficulty with a complete disavowal of geomancy
was perhaps that it would have left a door open to the idea, itself irreverent, that
the universe is random. T h e problem of how to regard the relation between
Heaven, natural things, and m a n occurs also in respect to disasters a n d prodigies,
of which Ou-yang Hsiu wrote:
In the Spring and Autumn Annals Confucius recorded disasters and prodigies, but
not their correspondances with human events. By giving them his careful attention,
what he meant was that Heaven's Way is distant and does not furnish man with
specific instructions at every juncture, but when the Gentleman observes an ir-
regularity in it, he will realize what it is that Heaven finds blameworthy, and in
fear and awe will look only to the state of his own soul. T o go into the corre-
spondances with human events would show that some match and some do not,
some tie in and some do not; coming upon the ones that do not match or tie in
would cause the Gentleman to take a contemptuous attitude, holding them to be
fortuitous and losing his awe of them. This is the deeper meaning.67
Just the same danger exists in geomancy if instead of worrying about virtue one
gives rein to a Promethean and revolutionary experimentalism. T h e ideal attitude,
then, is one of pious acceptance, neither manipulating nor scoffing, but believing
that Heaven may work its will through geomancy.

'Death and life have a doom, wealth and honor are from Heaven.' The humane
man sets straight his righteousness, not plotting out advantage; exhibits his moral-
ity, not tallying up merits. When son of man buries his parent, it is sufIicient that he
see to it body and spirit rest in peace. Even if there is something to (geomancy's)
'protection and response' theory, it is not pursued by the filial son and the humane
manF8
A lucky place is not easy to find, and to find a completely lucky one is particularly
hard. Geomancers are not often met with, and to meet a really skilled one is
particularly rare. How skilled or unskilled he is, whether one engages him or not,
the merits and defects of a place, and whether one acquires it or not, depend on
Heaven and will not be forcedF9
In recent times, knowledgeable people have said: you may happen upon a (good)
feng shui, but you cannot search one out. That is to say, if there is such a thing
as geomantic 'protection and response,' it will accrue to none but the filial son and
the humane man, and cannot be got by main @ ocfer. '-

In the cozy universe to which filial piety is the key, then, a distant Heaven rewards
virtue by preparing, i n its nearer aspect of Creator,6l sites to which the just are led

6eCha0 Fang, o p . cit., TSCC 17.680.zoa.

67Hsin T'ang shu, 34 (Hsiang-kang wen hsiieh yen chiu she chu pan ed., Vol. 5 , 371zd). Cf. Ana-

lects, 10.16; the Gentleman changes countenance at a clap of thunder or gust of wind.
5s Hsiang Ch'iao, op. cit., p. 35a.
69 Chao Fang, op. cit., p. 23b.
60 Hsiang Ch'iao, op. cit., p. 4za.
61 Shen, at any rate, often speaks of the Creator, e.g. r.gb, 1.7b, 1.16a.
CHINESE GEOMANCY 267
seemingly by chance. The good man trusts Heaven like a father, looks to his own
virtue and his family's, and does not try to force the natural mechanism by which
Heaven accomplishes its designs; but neither will he believe that the siting of his
parents' graves is of no moment.
In all these matters the main concern is still actual human experience and its
meanings rather than any abstract and exclusive constructs of religion or science.

chai
chan she shih che

ch'eng sheng ch'i

chieh

chih

chi.

fang wei chia

feng shui

hsing fa chia

hsing lung

hsing shih

hsiieh

kan

k'an yii

li ch'i

sha

sha ch'i

sheng ch'i

ti li

to shen kung, kai t'ien ming

tsung miao chih fa