The Feng Shui Companion: A User-Friendly Guide to the Ancient Art of Placement was written by George Birdsall, published in 1995. In the opening pages, I felt like I was sitting down to chat with a colleague who I had not spoken to in decades. Reading how other consultants and writers describe the fundamentals of Feng Shui can feel like “talking shop,” and it is wonderful when they add their own unique perceptions.

One observation made by Birdsall has to do with how the unseen energies (Qi), which we speak so casually about in feng shui, were likely more palpable to our ancestors, compared to us in modern times.  He notes that in society today we don’t have to spend large portions of our time just trying to stay alive, hunt for our food or keep from freezing.   We have cars, gadgets and technology, before that industrialization and mass manufacturing, which have diminished our intuition and instincts, formerly heightened through survival skills. We saw how the COVID lockdown of 2020 traumatized so many; I shudder to imagine how people would respond without their social media for a few weeks. Compared to our great-great- grandparents, we likely don’t hear, smell, see or intuit as well as they did, and our “sixth sense” may not be exercised nearly as much either.

The author then glides into commentary about the importance of understanding the outer natural environment, as well as our man-made exterior surroundings. He mentions electromagnetic fields, which he expounds on at the end of the book. With him being an architect, I was not surprised that he also put forth the real and physical impact of building materials as a feng shui influence. When I first began my own feng shui studies, a new phrase had been coined, “sick building syndrome,” to describe the toxic off-gassing from synthetic materials permeating building interiors and damaging the health of the occupants, unaware of the cause.

Then Birdsall lays out what he thinks are the two main schools of Feng Shui. Aside from the fact that there are many more than two Schools of Feng Shui, he defines one as “classical” and the other as “intuitive.”   Without explaining any of the mechanics involved, he states that learning classical Feng Shui is too arduous for Westerners and “almost impossible for a Western educated person to ever become a feng shui master in the classical school.”  Even when he published his book in 1995, Chinese masters were touring the world, openly teaching classical Feng Shui to westerners. I don’t know why his view on this is so skewed.

Instead, he encourages westerners to seek out the “Intuitive” School, which he never calls by its popular name: The Black Hat School, and which was all the rage in the early 1990’s, including a Black Hat author listed in his Bibliography.  Think how contradictory this is: To state in one chapter that modern people have lost touch with the intuition needed to detect subtle energies and in the next chapter, encouraging readers to practice a style of Feng Shui which relies on intuition!

Birdsall proceeds with examples of how Qi (life force energy) flows well or poorly based on a house’s shape and position on a street. These are mostly universal teachings on the basics of Qi flow, which one can read about elsewhere. I don’t have any issue with his illustrations, except when it comes to his limited recommendations for how to reconcile flaws or deficiencies in the environment or the floor plans.

He posits one glaring, dismissive misinterpretation of the historical development of the “Later Lo Map,” in comparison the “Early Lo Map.” Immediately thereafter we are presented with the Famous Black Hat Ba’gua Map, including a depiction of the Tai Chi (Yin-Yang symbol), positioned upside down.

Birdsall lists the Nine Basic Cures invented by the Black Hat New Age Feng Shui movement, which dominated Western pop culture in the mid-1990’s.  This could leave the newbie to assume that this is all there is to Feng Shui and that is a shame. Birdsall does state that his book is only a beginner’s introduction, but I honestly expected a little more critical thinking and in a classical context, from an engineer and architect.  These “nine cures” could in some instances be used as legitimate Feng Shui remedies, but their application within the Black Hat School is so generic, some of them can actually do harm.

As one example, Birdsall encourages readers to use the color red to activate or bring vitality to a space.  Red color on a large scale emulates the fire element and anyone who has taken a course in classical Feng Shui will know that fire in the wrong location can trigger accidents, arguments and other misfortunes. Fire should not automatically be placed in the back middle portion of any home, nor should the fire element automatically be placed in the South sector.   Likewise, using water indiscriminately for wealth luck could instead promote gossip, legal problems or sexual infidelity when placed in the wrong location.  And this is supposed to be the bread and butter of the “intuitive” school!

A succeeding chapter on supposed classical feng shui is actually a mish-mash of Form School theory mixed with Black Hat notions. Someone unfamiliar with the specific New Age Ba’gua will not be able to tease out the good information from the nonsense. For example, he states that sleeping under exposed beams can cause health problems. Yes, this can happen.  But then he perpetuates the belief that a bathroom in the back left-hand corner of a house is in the “Wealth Corner,” which supposedly sabotages the financial luck of the occupant. Were it that simple.

In the Appendices, he introduces the reader to the concerning influence of electromagnetic fields and the practice of Dowsing: both topics being very simpatico to any school of Feng Shui.

In fact, Feng Shui used to be called “Chinese Geomancy,” (Earth Divination) in scholarly articles about Feng Shui just before global curiosity about it surged in the 1990’s.  Proficiency in dowsing can identify naturally occurring geopathic stress lines, voids underground and water sources, all relevant to a Feng Shui audit because these features could undermine a person’s health. Ironically, the practice of dowsing is also partially an intuitive-driven experience.

EMF’s (electromagnetic fields) emanating from electronic devices, appliances and cell towers are what I have referred to as “modern Feng Shui hazards,” which should also not be ignored, although this is a separate area of expertise. Here Birdsall was ahead of his time because the health impact has only gotten so much worse over the decades.

Author: Kartar Diamond

Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®

From the Book Review Blog Series