Are the Eight Characters and Feng Shui only useful for China people?

In fact, Feng Shui knows no national boundaries.

Mr. Stephen Skinner wrote a book about Feng Shui and asked me to say a few words about it. Feng Shui, also known as the study of Feng Shui, belongs to the category of "numerology" in Sikuquanshu, and belongs to the same category as various fortune-telling and divination. Specifically, it is the art of building Yin and Yang houses (Yin houses refer to the construction of graves and Yang houses refer to the construction of rooms). Since Guan Ju and Guo Pu advocated "treating each other as guests" in the Three Kingdoms period, princes and nobles have been flocking to it, but Lv Cai and others have also profoundly criticized it.

However, to correctly evaluate "Feng Shui", we should start from the beginning. This is also a history that the author of this book, Mr. Steven Skinner, is not clear about.

Natural laws are different from social laws. When people just master the preliminary laws of nature and want to explain society and life, the result of giving full play to the simple view of nature is superstition.

Speaking of superstition, people immediately think of divination and fortune telling. In fact, divination and mathematics originated at the same time in ancient times, and Yin-Yang and Five Elements are also simple natural views summarized by primitive humans in observing nature. But later, they parted ways. On the one hand, it developed into a real science, on the other hand, it developed into various fortune-telling techniques, forming an ancient "learning" called "numerology".

Everyone has watched the World Cup football match broadcast live by satellite. At the beginning of the football match, there is also a ceremony in which the referee flips a coin and the captains of both sides guess the right to serve or the direction of attack. Throwing money is an ancient human culture-divination, but ancient coins are not metal coins, but shells. Because primitive people failed to master the laws of nature, divination is necessary in order to speculate on the success or failure of hunting, nomadism and war. When the original coin shell falls to the ground, there are two possibilities: cover it or turn it up. If the cover is positive (single) and the back is negative (double), if each is represented by a symbol, divination can be carried out. In a similar way, two symbols-and are generated. On the basis of these two symbols, gossip appeared. Bagua and the primitive and simple view of nature are interdependent and become symbols of heaven, earth, wind, thunder, water, fire, mountains and eight things. In order to solve the ever-changing phenomenon in society, eight kinds of hexagrams seem too simple, so they developed into sixty-four hexagrams, which produced Zhouyi. It was originally an ancient book for divination, but now it has become a hot topic.

We often take children's understanding of numbers as a measure of intellectual development, and the development of human intelligence also begins with numbers and shapes. The first is the counting method. All nationalities in the world use decimal counting method, which is caused by human own counter-ten fingers, which is the most dexterous calculation tool. Although the number symbols in different countries are different, their origins are mostly hieroglyphics of fingers. The commonly used number in the world today is Arabic numeral, namely 1234567890. In addition, there are decimal counting methods, which are mainly caused by the development of astronomy. The moon has twelve full moons a year, so a year is divided into twelve months. Even in modern Europe, some goods are counted in decimal. For example, 12 pencils are a dozen, and 12 pencils are also called arrow (144). In many countries, 1 1 and 12 have other characters, such as eleven (1 1) and twelve (12) in English. In China, in addition to levels 1, 2, 3 and 4, there are two other sets of statistics, namely heavenly stems and earthly branches:

Tian Gan: ethyl, propylene, butyl, heptyl, heptyl, octanol, non-decyl.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Gezhi: Ugly hasn't applied for going to sea this afternoon.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 1 12

In China, a day and night is divided into 12 hours, which are used for sex, ugliness, yin, hair, ..., while in the west, a day and night is divided into two 12 hours, that is to say, 24 hours is a day. Midnight is midnight, and noon is noon 12.

If heavenly stems and earthly branches is arranged in pairs in sequence, there will be 60 groups of Jiazi and Ugly, ... until Ren Xu and Gui Hai, which is not repeated. In China, it was first used to record days, and later it was used to record years. This is the "dry branch" method that began to be used as early as 3000 years ago. And it continues until now, for example, 1983 is the year of Guihai, while 1984 is the year of Jiazi from scratch, and 2003 is the year of Guiwei. This is a hexadecimal system.

In the process of understanding and transforming nature, human beings constantly sum up the laws. What is everything in the world made of? According to what law? These are all questions that need to be considered. Philosophers in ancient Greece believed that the world consists of four primitive elements-air, water, earth and fire, and each element corresponds to two of the four attributes-dry, wet, cold and hot.

China, on the other hand, founded the Five Elements Theory in the Zhou Dynasty according to the practice of production and life. In Hong Fan, he said: "Five elements: water, fire, wood, gold and earth. Moisturizing, fire inflammation, straight wood, golden leather, soil fertilizer. Moisturizing is salty, inflammation is bitter, straight is sour, leather is spicy, and farming is sweet. " I also believe that the five elements can coexist and mix with each other to produce everything. "Mandarin Zheng Yu" said: "The former king mixed everything with gold, wood, water and fire." This is actually a summary of production and life experience in metallurgy and pottery firing.

At this time, people thought that they had found the theoretical basis of everything in the universe, so they summed up various simple understandings of nature on this basis. First of all, there are five directions-east, south, west, north and middle, and five colors-green, yellow, red, white and black. Probably because of geographical reasons, the central part is the Loess Plateau, so the central part is yellow, the southern part is red soil, the northern part is black soil, the western part is white sand and the eastern part is blue forest (or blue sea). At present, the social altar in Zhongshan Park in Beijing (built in Yongle period of Ming Dynasty-142 1) is still paved with five-color soil in this direction. Then there is the trend of the four seasons, probably because of the monsoon. Spring is in the east, summer in the south, south, autumn in the west, west wind and winter in the north. Combining the relationship between the five elements and the four directions with the heavenly stem cross constitutes the original theory of "great unity": namely, A, B and Mu in the East are green; The fire in the south is red; The central black-bone chicken is khaki; Jin is Bai Xi; The north of this country is black. At this time, almost all the simple understanding of nature at that time was summed up. At the same time, based on the practice and experience of production and life, the theory of five elements was founded, namely: wood makes fire, fire makes soil, natural gold, gold makes water, aquatic wood; Mu, Tuk Shui, Shui, Huo, Jin Kemu. Here, we can see that Muke soil is the original understanding of soil and water conservation, and Tuke water is the experience of water control, …

water

Heibeixian

winter

Jintumu

Glycyrrhizic acid in Baixi Xinhuang

Autumn, summer and spring

fire

Hongnanku

summer