Mr. Steven Skinner wrote a book about Feng Shui and asked me to say a few words about it. Geomantic omen, also known as the study of geomancy, belongs to the category of "numerology" in Sikuquanshu, and belongs to the same category as various fortune-telling and divination. Specifically speaking, it is the art of building two houses of yin and yang (yin house refers to the construction of graves and yang house refers to the construction of rooms). Since the Three Kingdoms period, Guan Lu and Jin Dynasty Guo Pu advocated "mutual respect", princes and nobles flocked to it, but Lv Cai and others also made profound criticisms on it.
However, to correctly evaluate "Feng Shui", we should still start from the beginning. This is also the history that the author of this book, Mr. Steven Skinner, is not clear about.
the laws of nature and society are different. However, when people have just mastered the preliminary laws of nature, they want to explain society and life, so the result of giving full play to the simple view of nature is: superstition.
When people talk about superstition, they immediately think of divination and fortune telling. In fact, divination and mathematics originated at the same time in ancient times, and the Yin-Yang and the Five Elements were also simple natural views summarized by primitive human beings 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, which formed a kind of "learning" called "numerology" in ancient times.
Everyone has watched the World Cup football match broadcast live by satellite. At the beginning of the football match, there is also a ceremony, that is, the referee throws a coin, and the captains of both sides guess the right to serve or the direction of attack. Throwing money is a more ancient culture of human beings-divination, but the coins in ancient times were not metal coins, but shells. Because the primitive people failed to master the laws of nature, in order to speculate on the success or failure of hunting, nomadism and war, divination was necessary. There are two possibilities when the original coin-shell falls to the ground: covering or upturning. If the cover is Yang (single) and the back is Yin (double), if each is represented by a symbol, divination can be carried out. In a similar way, two symbols-and-are produced. On the basis of these two symbols, eight diagrams have emerged. Gossip and the original simple view of nature are attached to each other, and they become symbols of eight things: heaven, earth, wind, thunder, water, fire, mountains and peace. In order to solve the ever-changing phenomenon in society, eight kinds of divinatory symbols seem to be too simple, so they developed into sixty-four divinatory symbols, which led to Zhouyi. It was originally an ancient book for divination, but now it has become a hot topic.
We often regard children's literacy as the 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 the decimal counting method, which is caused by human's own counter-ten fingers, which is the most dexterous calculation tool. Although the number symbols in different countries are different, their origins are mostly pictographs of fingers. Today, the universal number in the world is Arabic number, that is, 123456789. In addition, there is a decimal counting method, which is mainly caused by the development of astronomy. The moon is full and short twelve times a year, so a year is divided into twelve months. Even in modern Europe, some commodities are counted in decimal. For example, 12 pencils are a dozen, and 12 dozen is also called a Luo (144). In many countries, 11 and 12 have other characters, such as ELEVEN(11) and Twenty (12) in English. In China, there are two other sets of counting characters besides one, two, three and four. That is, heavenly stems and earthly branches:
heavenly stems: ethylene, propylene, butyl, heptyl, octyl and nonyl
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1
earthly branches: Zi Chou, Yin Mao, Chen, have not applied for a holiday in the afternoon
12345678, 911112
In China, one day and night are divided into twelve hours, respectively. Midnight is midnight, and noon is noon.
If the heavenly stems and earthly branches are arranged in pairs, there will be sixty groups of Jiazi, Ebou, ... until Renxu and Guihai, and one * * * will not be repeated. In China, it was first used to record the day, and later it was used to record the year. This is the "dry branch" method that was used as early as 3, years ago. And has been extended to the present, for example, 1983 was the year of Guihai, while 1984 was the year of Jiazi from scratch, and 23 was the year of Guiwei. This is a hexadecimal system.
in the process of understanding and transforming nature, human beings constantly sum up laws. What are all things in the world made of? According to what law? These are all questions to think about. Philosophers in ancient Greece believed that the world was composed of four primitive elements-air, water, earth and fire, and each element corresponded to two of the four properties-dry, wet, cold and hot.
China, on the other hand, founded the Five Elements Theory in the Zhou Dynasty according to his production and life practice. In Hong Fan, he said, "The Five Elements: water, fire, wood, gold and earth. The water is moist, the fire is inflamed, the wood is straight, the gold is leather, and the soil is fertile. It is salty when moistened, bitter when inflamed, sour when straight, pungent when leathered, and sweet when cultivated. " It is also believed that the five elements can coexist with each other and mix with each other to produce everything. In "Mandarin Zheng Yu", it is said: "The former king mixed earth with gold, wood, water and fire with hundreds of things." This is actually a summary of the experience of production and life in metallurgy and pottery burning.
At this time, people thought that they had found the theoretical basis of everything in the universe, so they summarized 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 geography, 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 of Ming Dynasty-1421) is still paved with five-color soil in this direction. Then there are the directions of the four seasons, probably due to the monsoon. Spring is in the east, summer is in the south, southerly, autumn is in the west, westerly and winter is in the north. Combining the relationship between the five elements and the quartet with the ten words of heavenly dryness constitutes the original theory of "great unity": that is, the oriental A, B, wood is green; The fire in the south is red; The central Wuji soil is yellow; Western Geng Xin Jin is white; The northern part of the country is black. At this time, almost all the simple understandings of nature at that time were summarized together. At the same time, based on the practice and experience of production and life, the theory of five elements is founded, that is: wood fire, fire produces soil, native gold, gold produces water and aquatic wood; Mu Ke Tu, Tu Ke Shui, Shui Ke Huo, Huo Ke Jin, Jin Kemu. Here, we can see that Muke soil is the original understanding of water and soil conservation, and Tuke water is the experience of water control ...
Water is salty in the north
Winter
Golden soil
White West, pungent yellow, sweet green and sour east
Autumn, summer and spring
Fire
Red South and bitter
.