Shandong feng shui master Wei Baohong talked about the heyday and historical development of feng shui, the theory was complete and flourished in the Song Dynasty, and fell in the Yuan Dynasty.
The Song Dynasty can be said to be the peak period of the development of Feng Shui in China, and the theory of Feng Shui during this period can be said to be very complete. From eunuchs to ordinary people, every household will use feng shui knowledge in their lives. Moreover, during this period, famous teachers and classic works were flourished, and the feng shui masters in the society at that time also began to be sought after by everyone. Famous teachers such as Lai Wenjun, Fu Botong, Cai Yuanding, etc. Classic works such as "The Method of Regulating Air Cavitation", "Celestial Stars" and so on.
The Yuan Dynasty was a period of decline in the entire scholar culture, not to mention the feng shui culture, so I won't repeat it here.
Prosperity and flooding coexisted in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The Ming Dynasty can be seen as another peak period for the development of feng shui, and it is also the joint point of the development of Chinese feng shui from prosperity to decline. After Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, Feng Shui became a part of folk customs like the Song Dynasty. There are also many folk legends about Zhu Yuanzhang's transformation of the feng shui of Nanjing's capital. For example, let all the mountains outside Nanjing face the city and worship the imperial power. Only Niushou Mountain is "not very obedient", looking south with his back to the lord and not to the imperial power. In this way, Zhu Yuanzhang was very dissatisfied, and he was guilty of it, and he whipped Fang Shan with a hundred strokes of the rod to imitate Qin Shi Huang back then to cut off the spirit of the southeast emperor.
In addition, the names of the sixteen Yellow Emperors of the Ming Dynasty all contain the meaning of gold, wood, water, fire and earth, and the story of the god Liu Bowen is even more popular.
This is precisely because of the prosperity of the Ming Dynasty and the royal respect of Feng Shui, which led to the flooding trend at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Along the Qing Dynasty, feng shui was the coexistence of prosperity and decline, from prosperity to decline. During this period, there were few princes, nobles and eunuchs who did not believe in feng shui, and with the cultural exchanges between the East and the West, feng shui was introduced to Europe in this era.
During this period, an important sect in Feng Shui also emerged - the Xuankong School. There are also two masters of Feng Shui, one is Jiang Dahong, who is the author of "Geographical Dialectic", and Shen Zhu, the originator of Shen's Xuankong Science. This is the good side of the development of Feng Shui, and on the other hand, because the people believe in and respect Feng Shui, there is a group of rivers and lakes full of nonsense. This period also gave rise to two separate views on Feng Shui, one is faith, and the other is that it is useless and impractical.
The modern period when there were many sects and pseudo-studies were rampant.
In modern society, China has developed a relatively difficult and chaotic society, not to mention Feng Shui, and the development of Feng Shui has gradually become sectarian and isolated. The various sects are working behind closed doors, attacking each other, and even some feng shui has become a pseudo-science, borrowing the word feng shui to deceive the world and steal fame. A period of renewed emphasis and rebirth in modern development.
In the early days of liberation, due to the specific historical environment, Feng Shui was labeled as a feudal superstition, and gradually became a hidden science, and its development was in a stage of stagnation. Since the reform and development, it has gradually justified the name of Feng Shui.
Feng Shui is a world-famous cultural wisdom crystallization in China, looking at the world, China's Feng Shui is prevalent in Southeast Asia, South Korea's National Seoul University has opened a Feng Shui theory course, and also wants to apply for Feng Shui World Heritage Site, Japan has established a Feng Shui Researchers Society, 110 universities have Feng Shui classes, the United States has opened more than 20 universities in the I Ching Feng Shui and other professional courses and so on.
Our universities in China, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Wuhan University, and the University of Hong Kong all offer courses in the I Ching and Architectural Feng Shui. In modern times, the knowledge of Feng Shui has gradually been applied to the education system and the home guidance of the public.
The above is an introduction to the origin and historical development of Chinese Feng Shui, limited to knowledge and cognition, there are inevitably omissions and mistakes, I hope readers and friends will correct!
Edited on 2024-01-20 ยท The copyright belongs to the author, Shandong Feng Shui master Wei Baohong.