Feng shui wars

This file photo taken on July 27 shows a devastating landslide at Mt. Umyeon due to heavy downpours. / Korea Times

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By Janet Shin

People have been trying to improve their destiny from ancient days. As a professional fortune teller practicing saju, face and palm reading and feng shui, it is interesting to see how people react to their destiny. They hardly accept their given destiny as it is. Ten to one they ask how to improve their destiny or avoid misfortune. It might be natural that people fear hearing anything negative about their lives. And this is serious even for those who think they are successful. They sometimes ask me to say only good things about their life and not to reveal if there is any misfortune. They were afraid of hearing of ill luck that might ruin their achievements and happiness.

I have tried to convince people that saju readings are not to threaten them by revealing a dreadful fate. It is like a streetlight in a secluded dark area of their life paths. Without the light, they might stumble over a stone unexpectedly or fall over a precipitous hill. Even in daytime, people might swerve to avoid a rock and plunge off a cliff.

Successful people who ride high seldom consult fortune tellers about their future. It might not be easy to imagine a failure in their life, or they just don't want to know unveiled misfortunes. However a life is not always driving by the expressway. Life paths may consist of various types of roads, sometimes expressways but other times it can be a meandering and irregular route. By reading saju, one is able to know where he or she is, how to drive and when to slow down or speed up.

Saju "palja" (four pillars and the eight letters of destiny) is determined from one's birth, so one cannot alter it. People often forget this fact and fraudulent fortune tellers try to mislead them by abusing feeble minds.

In an attempt to satisfy this infinite yearning, people studied and took advantage of feng shui.

Feng shui is to bring luck by appropriate remedies of interior design in houses or offices and living environments including locations, sizes, shapes and colors of buildings. People often want to drive fast even on a mountain road. And feng shui has provided contingency measures to improve their destiny under given situations. It was not always effective but the spell was fascinating.

Hong Kong, along with other South Asian countries, is known for its deep and long-lasting faith in feng shui. The people there practice feng shui in every way of their daily life.

There is a feng shui war in Hong Kong's Central district, the glamorous heart of the city noted as Asia's leading financial area. It is also renowned for an auspicious site according to feng shui. Some conflict among the buildings in this area is unavoidable in order to see more benefits of good feng shui. The Bank of China building started the war by having the outer appearance of sharp edges like a sword by using glass as an exterior cladding. Accordingly this building became notorious for its dreadfully sharp energy. Then the HSBC building, located nearby, put a crane shaped like a cannon on the top of the building in order to fight against the harmful energy of the Bank of China. The other buildings in this area also installed reflected glass, dark curtains and other feng shui devices to block out the threatening energy from those two buildings.

While Hong Kong has been a feng shui heaven to seek ways to improve people's lives or to compete with others, Korea has sought for the best sites for graves. The former is called yang feng shui and the latter yin feng shui.

It was written in the Annals of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), of how vassals exploited feng shui experts to deprive power by selecting auspicious or inauspicious sites for kings' graves. There was a behind-the-scenes story, related with feng shui that the eldest princes died young for generations because of the wrongly chosen kings' graves. And it was intentionally led by the second-born princes to usurp the throne.

The malicious use of feng shui was taken to an extreme by the Japanese during their nation's colonial period. Iron rods were rammed in pit holes of auspicious sites. Looking at a map of the Korean Peninsula, the land energy originated from ranges of mountains to other branch mountains and to individual village. The iron rods are being found at certain spots in mountains where the energy is collected, called pit holes. It was to cut the vein of energy, as the auspicious energy from the pit holes could have produced national heroes.

There was a devastating landslide at Mt. Umyeon in July. It was reported that the cause was heavy downpours, loose soil and insufficient drainage. But there still exists controversy over its feng shui as Mt. Umyeon was named after its shape, which looks like a sleeping cow, lying down, and the energy came from Mt. Gwanak. There have been various types of land developments, such as new towns between Mt. Gwanak and Mt. Umyeon and tunnels passing through Mt. Umyeon. The Mt. Umyeon tunnel goes through the area of the so-called cow's neck. Feng shui experts have blamed over-development for the cause of the landslide.

Feng shui has been used to bring luck to one's life or to impede others' success. Regardless of people's beliefs, there still are pros and cons in assessing their value. Nevertheless, it is still alive in every aspects of our life.

Information: Are you interested in learning more about the ancient Chinese teaching about the "Four Pillars of Destiny?" For further information, visit Janet's website at www.fourpillarskorea.com, contact her at 010-5414-7461 or email janetshin@hotmail.com.

The writer is the president of the Heavenly Garden, a saju research center in Korea, and the author of "Learning Four Pillars".