Wishing Upon A Star

The novelty of the Flying Star Method began its illustrious career only in the last two decades. Amazingly, its ephemeral popularity remains strong and many practitioners regard it as an important factor in the analysis of Feng Shui. Some have even crossed the line to garland it with flowers and rainbow it with colours. It seems to have overtaken the importance of external landforms whose Feng Shui was practised few thousand years back. Classical Feng Shui has its roots in the analyses of mountains and water. The Flying Star Method is only an end-user product.

Many practitioners are so engrossed in the activation of the most prosperous facing star with water features, believing that the activation invites wealth in immense proportions. The wish to make millions is no longer a dream beyond reach. But if it really worked that way, the practitioners would be the first to prosper.

The Flying Star Method is only a subsidiary of the mother system of a larger concept known as Xuan Kong. Its existence began about 400 years ago. Xuan Kong practitioners skilfully use this art for house divination. The fundamental components make up of the BaGua, Yin and Yang of the five elements, the Nine Stars; and the numerical values of the Hetu and LuoShu. The stars come in three forms; Qi, number and image. It is this lack of understanding of the stars that causes confusions over their applications. Together with the ‘Eight Mansions’ and ‘Dragon Date Eight Formations’, they are part of the San Yuan School of Feng Shui.

The common practice of the Flying Star chart is simply to analyse the Qi or ‘energy’ flow. It is an internal application. There ought to be a set of formulae to qualify the existence of Qi in the environment first. If there were no Qi, then the Flying Star Method becomes inappropriate. To strictly practise flying star technique for feng shui analysis is as inadequate as felling an old oak tree with a knife. The over-emphasis cannot be understated.

The period of the building is determined by its age. This is the first step in the charting of the flying star analysis. While most schools use the ‘three cycles nine periods’ chart, there are other schools that believe in the ‘two cycles eight periods’ chart. Yet both flawed in the first and last periods. There are also the controversial subjects on the how a house can change its period through renovations, the necessity to change and the changeability of its period.

It is imperative to determine the “Facing and Seating” of the subject matter. Unfortunately, there is no consensus amongst Feng Shui experts on the correct method. A good example is the facing of an apartment unit: Is the individual unit used to determine the Facing, or is it the apartment building as a whole? There is also the uncertain measurement of ‘Yang’. Is the spacious golf course more ‘Yang’ than the busy intersection of roads? If your main door faces the golf course and the living room faces the intersection, which orientation would you consider as your facing? Can you use the Flying Star if the northwest sector of the house is missing? There remain too many questions unanswered.

To use the move-in date or the construction date to determine the period of a given building is another controversial argument amongst many Flying Star practitioners. The general agreement lies in the core principle of the Cosmic Trinity that indicates the unity of Heaven, Earth and Man Qi. None could agree on how and when these three forces are energised. Which period chart do we use for a room if an occupied house built in early 2003 has new tenants in mid 2004? Does the same theory apply to an old apartment building receiving new residents?

Timeliness is one aspect being taught in the use of the Flying Star method. The stars are labelled one to nine with their individual quality in mind. Each star is pre-empted as auspicious or inauspicious without justice. That is why it is so easy to simply condemn the untimely stars 2 and 5 as sickness and evil star respectively. When the star 7 loses its shine as we enter Period 8, we label it as a robbery star without hesitation. Star 3 is not a favourable star while stars 4 and 9 are supposedly ‘neutral’ in nature. Now that we are left with good stars 1, 6 and 8, it does not need a mathematician to calculate the odds of us squeezing into the storeroom. Surprisingly, the method is widely accepted by practitioners without question. Blind faith is not acceptable in the science of Feng Shui.

The theory of the overriding effects of a good star over ‘bad star’ in a palace is also questionable. It implies that the bad stars would suddenly become non-existent. Though its bad effects may be minimised, its existence cannot be ignored. A person going through a ten-year good luck pillar has his months of bad luck as well. Otherwise, it would violate the fundamental principle of yin and yang; as in every yin there is yang and in every yang there is yin.

Another interesting practice is the trapping of bad stars by boxing them up with four walls. Usually the fearsome one seems to be the annual star 5. It would be illogical if the four walls were not hermetically sealed. Without ventilation, the air becomes stale. Is this not a Feng Shui taboo? Even if you can trap the star in its Qi form, you cannot entomb the star in its numerical and image forms. And that’s leaving out the fact that star 5 is sometimes known as the Yellow Emperor star for its great positive powers. This indicates a clear lacking in the understanding of the nature of the star 5.

There is also the application of enhancers and countermeasures. If there is a tree in front of your door creating bad Qi, it is only logical to cut it down or move it elsewhere. To place the axe above the door to block the bad Qi is even more dangerous as you do not know when it may fall off and land on someone’s head. If there are loose boulders on some overhanging cliff across from your house, it is wiser to clear them away. To face it with a metal spring hoping to bounce it off is not too wise a decision. Removing them would naturally dissipate the killing Qi. To weaken a yellow star five with pots of plants is like making a vegetarian out of the dragon. Using water to weaken the metal star six is inevitably enhancing its activities. The New Age interventions always fall to dust against the age-old wisdom that was built on solid grounds.

The Five Elements are not about the physical changes of energies, nor are they about the changes in the climatic seasons. The five elements are just representations of Qi in the tangible forms. The producing and weakening cycles represent the different phases in the transformation of Qi. Beside quality, the quantity, location and the time factor of the five elements are important considerations.

Qi is carried by what we cannot see and retained by what we cannot break. For in between the unseen and the unbreakable, is what that decides the fate of the stars. This is what that matters.