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How Feng Shui Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, uh, and Jerry's over there.
0:16
Speaker 1: So it's the stuff you should know. Our chi is flowing,
0:20
Speaker 1: baby chee or key. Yeah. There's a lot of different
0:24
Speaker 1: pronunciations that are gonna happen today. Well supposedly. Um, it's
0:28
Speaker 1: just the different spellings the same pronunciation. Q i and
0:32
Speaker 1: h i are both cheap. Yeah, um, unless they're saying
0:36
Speaker 1: kai for c h i, in which kids it's something
0:39
Speaker 1: totally different. Yeah, that's that would be the Greek letter correct. Um,
0:42
Speaker 1: that means energy. Are we going to pronounce this fung shui?
0:47
Speaker 1: I usually say fung chui fui, but it could go
0:52
Speaker 1: either way. I mean, it depends. If it's Mandarin that
0:55
Speaker 1: we're speaking, Chuck, Yeah, we should say fong shui fun.
1:01
Speaker 1: I guess I usually say it in Mandarin fun chui.
1:04
Speaker 1: If we're speaking in Cantonese, we would say fung suite. Okay,
1:10
Speaker 1: So I guess we're gonna go with the Mandarin. Alright, great,
1:13
Speaker 1: okay with you. Yeah, and Uh I even looked up
1:16
Speaker 1: because I've always said Tao is um um. Yeah, that's right, right. Well,
1:20
Speaker 1: a lot of people say there's been some confusion. So
1:23
Speaker 1: I actually looked it up and this author, Derrek Lynn,
1:25
Speaker 1: had a nice little thing. The first the misconception, he says,
1:30
Speaker 1: is that the first letter in t a o daw
1:33
Speaker 1: is an approximation of a Chinese sound that does not
1:36
Speaker 1: have an exact English equivalent, because apparently in England, I
1:40
Speaker 1: think they say Taoism. But he says that's actually not true.
1:44
Speaker 1: There is an equivalent, and it is a d And
1:47
Speaker 1: he said the misconception was created by an author who
1:50
Speaker 1: had no understanding of Chinese and that was spread around.
1:53
Speaker 1: He did not name the author, but apparently as he
1:56
Speaker 1: had high academic standing, Jonathan Franz, and so he said
2:01
Speaker 1: it is Daoism if you're speaking in English, and that
2:05
Speaker 1: this author has uh spread a mistruth that there is
2:09
Speaker 1: no real translation. Nice. There you go. That was the
2:17
Speaker 1: glossary of this episode pretty much. So, uh, well, let's
2:21
Speaker 1: talk about she first man, because fun is the the
2:26
Speaker 1: practice of allowing ch to flow in the best possible way,
2:32
Speaker 1: and she is the Chinese concept of the energy that
2:37
Speaker 1: pervades and permeates the universe, including us, and it is
2:42
Speaker 1: linked to Taoism and goes all the way back to
2:44
Speaker 1: sixth century BC. And um, like you said, it's uh,
2:49
Speaker 1: it's supposedly something that can't even be described in language.
2:54
Speaker 1: But you did a pretty good job, I think for
2:57
Speaker 1: someone who uh supposedly is not supposed to be able
2:59
Speaker 1: to do that. The thing is, well, I'm obviously an
3:03
Speaker 1: incredible person. The thing is, um, this ch this energy
3:09
Speaker 1: can be blocked, it can fall out of balance. There's
3:12
Speaker 1: it's not self correcting necessarily. Sometimes it needs help, that's right.
3:17
Speaker 1: And so when we inhabit an area, build a home,
3:21
Speaker 1: a community, palace, what have you, we need to build
3:25
Speaker 1: it in such a way that it's not going to
3:27
Speaker 1: block this chi or it's not going to um throw
3:32
Speaker 1: things out of balance, because we will be impacted negatively
3:35
Speaker 1: if it if that happens, that's right. Because in the
3:38
Speaker 1: East there is a long held belief that the space
3:42
Speaker 1: we inhabit is not just the space we live in,
3:46
Speaker 1: but we are actually connected to that uh spiritually and
3:49
Speaker 1: with our energy. And um that the way you lay
3:55
Speaker 1: out your home and the way you build like even
3:59
Speaker 1: where you play your home on your property and the
4:02
Speaker 1: way you align it with the surrounding nature. It's actually
4:06
Speaker 1: very important part of it. Um. That is functual, which
4:10
Speaker 1: is translated literally as wind and water. Right, pretty neat. Um.
4:16
Speaker 1: A lot of people in the West have jumped on
4:18
Speaker 1: this train since the nineteen eighties. It's very uh popular
4:21
Speaker 1: thing to do. Um, often misguided attempts. Um. As far
4:26
Speaker 1: as traditional functuation, Well, it's like a completely different school. Yeah, basically, um,
4:31
Speaker 1: not basically entirely, but um. A lot of people in
4:34
Speaker 1: the West also will poopoo this, and a lot of
4:37
Speaker 1: people in the East poopoo it. Now apparently only about
4:39
Speaker 1: a third of people in modern China even believe it
4:42
Speaker 1: is a thing. Um. Well, Chairman Mao rooted it out
4:45
Speaker 1: during the Cultural Revolution. Yeah, I mean it is. It is.
4:49
Speaker 1: It's not illegal to practice it. It is illegal though,
4:51
Speaker 1: to start a business in China modern China where you
4:56
Speaker 1: say that you're doing functually. Um, But they can't really like, well,
5:01
Speaker 1: I guess you could allow the practice. They outlaw lots
5:03
Speaker 1: of stuff from what I've been told. But um, apparently
5:06
Speaker 1: the younger generation it's even less than a third. It's
5:09
Speaker 1: just kind of going the way of the Dodo. But hey,
5:11
Speaker 1: we picked up on it in California and then ran
5:14
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, you know, especially in the eighties. Yeah, sure, man,
5:18
Speaker 1: that was a super eighties thing. But a lot of
5:20
Speaker 1: people poopoo it though, as they do a lot of
5:22
Speaker 1: things in the ease and saying this is just a
5:23
Speaker 1: bunch of superstitious gobbadygook. There's no such thing as an
5:27
Speaker 1: energy flowing through your house or your body that needs
5:30
Speaker 1: to be aligned. So we're not here to uh, we're
5:34
Speaker 1: just gonna explain it to you exactly, So just save
5:37
Speaker 1: your emails people. So, um, what's interesting about fung hui
5:42
Speaker 1: initially is that not not just China but also India
5:47
Speaker 1: lay claim to its origins. Actually, that's right, um, And
5:50
Speaker 1: remember I think you you did a pretty good job
5:52
Speaker 1: defining it. But which it's they're saying again, funcui is
5:56
Speaker 1: this practice of arranging your in have, your your abode,
6:02
Speaker 1: your life, your workspace, um in a way that allows
6:07
Speaker 1: che to flow freely. That's right, okay, um. And there
6:12
Speaker 1: was there's evidence I think back three thousand years ago,
6:17
Speaker 1: no sorry years ago, so about BC there is evidence
6:24
Speaker 1: of what the Indians call Vastu Shastra, which is basically
6:28
Speaker 1: a translation of building science, which is that you should
6:32
Speaker 1: follow certain practices, use certain geometries to allow energy to
6:37
Speaker 1: flow so that you can prosper and not be harmed negatively. Yeah,
6:41
Speaker 1: and uh, this is um been seeing many times. I've
6:45
Speaker 1: read a great article in UH, I think it was
6:49
Speaker 1: history today by guy named Anthony Evini called bringing the
6:52
Speaker 1: Sky down to Earth, with basically the idea that many
6:56
Speaker 1: many cities through history have been built with this concept
6:59
Speaker 1: in my and that the gods bringing the gods down
7:03
Speaker 1: to your city, Like you know, he's a stonehenge, Beijing, Washington,
7:09
Speaker 1: d c Uh and m this place in Mexico that
7:14
Speaker 1: I will pronounce as Theo t Hua Kan. I don't
7:19
Speaker 1: know if that's right. It's like a Mayan ancient Mayan city,
7:22
Speaker 1: and they all have the same um philosophy of mine,
7:27
Speaker 1: which is apparently if you go to Beijing, it's very
7:29
Speaker 1: famous for its layout. As his d c. You can
7:32
Speaker 1: stand in Tienamen Square and you can draw a straight
7:34
Speaker 1: line up the bell and drum towers, straight through to
7:38
Speaker 1: the monument to the People's Heroes, to the Masoli liam
7:42
Speaker 1: of Mao z Dong on a perfect north south axis,
7:46
Speaker 1: like everything is planned out. And this is I'm not
7:51
Speaker 1: saying Washington, d C. Was necessarily fung swid Fun said,
7:56
Speaker 1: and I know that you shouldn't use that as a verb,
7:58
Speaker 1: but I'm going to It works. But it's it's the
8:01
Speaker 1: idea like Stonehenge, that the it's the cities are aligned
8:04
Speaker 1: cosmically somehow with the stars in mind. And it can
8:08
Speaker 1: be as simple as um the entrance to the dwelling
8:13
Speaker 1: or the city, or the burial mound or temple or Stonehenge,
8:17
Speaker 1: whatever is aligned so that the sun comes right up
8:22
Speaker 1: through it on the winter solstice or thing. That that
8:25
Speaker 1: is the basis of fung hui, and it does show
8:29
Speaker 1: up in other cultures across time. Yeah. One of the
8:32
Speaker 1: one of the famous cities that was laid out according
8:36
Speaker 1: to um, this Indian version of it, Vastu Shastra as
8:41
Speaker 1: um ankor Watt in Cambodia, very famous temple. Those were
8:47
Speaker 1: built and I think the thirteenth century CE. So it's
8:49
Speaker 1: not evidence that the Indians were first, but there is
8:53
Speaker 1: evidence elsewhere that that there were Indian cities and buildings
8:57
Speaker 1: planned out according to these and the idea was is
9:00
Speaker 1: that a couple of thousand years later, some Indian monks,
9:05
Speaker 1: Hindu monks made their way into maybe to bed or
9:09
Speaker 1: Mongolia or China and started spreading the vast Shastra. And
9:14
Speaker 1: that's when China got their hands on it and turned
9:17
Speaker 1: it into what we now recognize this functually. That's one
9:20
Speaker 1: interpretation of the origin of the whole thing. Yeah, and
9:23
Speaker 1: and either way, what both of them are doing is
9:26
Speaker 1: looking and taking into accounts, uh the five elements earth, water, fire, air,
9:32
Speaker 1: and space and how they affect uh, your your pad
9:37
Speaker 1: and um or your city, like you said, our community
9:40
Speaker 1: or temple um. And some people might say, well, this
9:43
Speaker 1: is you know, you might want to call it functual.
9:46
Speaker 1: But I'm just building a house and I think we've
9:49
Speaker 1: got this lovely mountain view, and I like the sunrise
9:52
Speaker 1: to come up through my kitchen because I like a
9:54
Speaker 1: bright kitchen. So that's how I'm going to build my house.
9:57
Speaker 1: People that practice function, I would say, brother, that's function,
10:01
Speaker 1: that's a t s. You know, it's just how I
10:04
Speaker 1: like to build my house. And you know that. Yeah,
10:07
Speaker 1: And then they fight, that's right, They leg wrestle for domination.
10:11
Speaker 1: So that though, would be more Western functuation. And we'll
10:15
Speaker 1: get into it. But Basically, the distinction between Western functional
10:19
Speaker 1: eighties function and Classic Functui UM is the amount of
10:26
Speaker 1: scientific formulae put into it, the amount of calculations at
10:31
Speaker 1: least that are put into it, the amount of thought.
10:34
Speaker 1: It's like Western function is Functui light and not even
10:38
Speaker 1: l I G h T like l I T E
10:40
Speaker 1: like that kind of eighties light. Yeah, well, we might
10:44
Speaker 1: as well talk about the schools. Then it's a great
10:47
Speaker 1: before we do. Though, sorry to interrupt the segua because
10:49
Speaker 1: it was pretty good. We should say that UM. Most
10:53
Speaker 1: historians now believe that it was actually China that came
10:56
Speaker 1: up with Yeah, just the evidence is is just earlier
11:01
Speaker 1: for the idea that it originated with burials in China,
11:06
Speaker 1: Like you buried people a certain way and you built
11:09
Speaker 1: the burial grounds in a certain way, according to Functual.
11:12
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is they leg wrestled and he
11:15
Speaker 1: won the leg wrestle. Very good. Uh So the different
11:18
Speaker 1: schools UM, there are a lot of variations, but the
11:21
Speaker 1: three main categories are the form school, which was from
11:26
Speaker 1: southern China, and that is heavily based on the environment.
11:30
Speaker 1: Like we were talking about Classic Functual, it's the oldest
11:33
Speaker 1: form and that's when you're talking about and back then
11:36
Speaker 1: it was practical because what they were trying to do
11:39
Speaker 1: is build a safe place for your house to be. Um.
11:43
Speaker 1: So maybe you uh set your house up with the
11:46
Speaker 1: wind block at the mountains, with that landscape that slopes,
11:51
Speaker 1: or you know, the water flowing down to you is
11:53
Speaker 1: super important, so you may want to open your house
11:56
Speaker 1: up to that. But it was it was practical though,
11:59
Speaker 1: right exactly. Um. And another practical way of um figuring
12:03
Speaker 1: out where to put your house is found in the
12:05
Speaker 1: compass school. That one just forget about it. That's that's
12:09
Speaker 1: the one I understand the most. This one makes the
12:11
Speaker 1: most sense to me. Yeah, because it's math and you're
12:14
Speaker 1: like weird like that, well a little maybe a little bit.
12:18
Speaker 1: But basically what this says is it's kind of like
12:21
Speaker 1: the form school where you're looking for different features of
12:25
Speaker 1: the landscape to to most benefit where to build your house.
12:29
Speaker 1: But this is this is using that same kind of
12:32
Speaker 1: thought process but aligning it with magnetism and the stars
12:37
Speaker 1: to write right, well, you're using the stars to determine magnetism,
12:41
Speaker 1: like which way is north and south and that kind
12:43
Speaker 1: of thing. But it does combine some math, Chinese astrology,
12:47
Speaker 1: and then fun sui together and you get what's called
12:52
Speaker 1: the compass school, which is also very frequently known as
12:55
Speaker 1: traditional Functui, and it includes a lot of detail old
13:00
Speaker 1: research to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do
13:04
Speaker 1: where your house is supposed to be facing, if it
13:07
Speaker 1: is facing a certain way, of what you can do
13:08
Speaker 1: to kind of correct it. There's just a ton of
13:11
Speaker 1: thought and calculation put into what we'll learn later is
13:14
Speaker 1: called the Bogwa map. So that's that's mostly the traditional
13:18
Speaker 1: school is the compass school, and it's based on the
13:21
Speaker 1: idea that magnetism dictates which way your whole jam should
13:26
Speaker 1: be facing and oriented. And I think to the north
13:31
Speaker 1: is the right way. That's the right way, where as
13:33
Speaker 1: far as your entry way, yes, okay uh. And then
13:36
Speaker 1: we have um what the Westerners have latched onto um
13:41
Speaker 1: the Black Hat sect or that's nomina it does or
13:46
Speaker 1: the Black sect Esoteric Buddhism Functional which was UM founded
13:51
Speaker 1: by Professor Thomas Lynn Jun who was known UM and
13:56
Speaker 1: believed to be an enlightened man and Um he basically
14:01
Speaker 1: came to the West and founded this sect of functual
14:04
Speaker 1: and it blew up and Um, Westerners, I love this
14:08
Speaker 1: one because it's the one that most easily translates to
14:11
Speaker 1: an h G TV show, right, you know, like put
14:14
Speaker 1: this plant there, put a fountain there, put your door
14:17
Speaker 1: here and painted this color, and and you're going to
14:20
Speaker 1: be wealthy and successful. Don't put this there, don't put
14:23
Speaker 1: that there. It's it's a lot of object placement. So
14:27
Speaker 1: it's easy for us dummies over here to understand it's
14:30
Speaker 1: basically interior design pretty much. So we'll talk a little
14:34
Speaker 1: more about the distinction and then what some of the
14:36
Speaker 1: commonalities they have are right after this, so chuck the
15:03
Speaker 1: black Hat school. It's hilarious to me, like, why would
15:07
Speaker 1: you call it that? I don't know. I'm sure there
15:09
Speaker 1: was a great reason I couldn't find it anywhere. What
15:12
Speaker 1: I found instead is that most people call it Western function,
15:17
Speaker 1: and a lot of functual practitioners pooh pooh Western. They're
15:22
Speaker 1: like this this is some like perversion of an interpretation
15:29
Speaker 1: of functui. Yeah, it's it's americanized, um, and it's taught
15:32
Speaker 1: by people who don't even necessarily aren't functual masters, even
15:36
Speaker 1: though just if they can set up a website and say,
15:40
Speaker 1: pay me a thousand dollars, I'll come and tell you
15:42
Speaker 1: where to put your plants exactly. But Thomas lynn Un
15:45
Speaker 1: and his followers say, no, we had we had the basics, Like, yeah, definitely,
15:50
Speaker 1: traditional functual is very detailed, very um mathematically oriented. But
15:58
Speaker 1: we're still getting the same point across, coming to the
16:00
Speaker 1: same conclusions and just an easier corner cutting way. That's right.
16:06
Speaker 1: Why go to all the trouble if you can get
16:07
Speaker 1: the same results. What's more Western than that? Good point? Uh?
16:12
Speaker 1: So should we talk about um the five elements a
16:15
Speaker 1: little bit? I guess yes. UM, Like I said, there
16:17
Speaker 1: is earth, fire, metal, water, and wood, and these are
16:21
Speaker 1: the phases through which the energy or the g or
16:24
Speaker 1: the key moves. And UM, I think this article said
16:28
Speaker 1: it very well. It's like a sort of a game
16:30
Speaker 1: of rock paper scissors. If you look at a creative
16:33
Speaker 1: or productive UM way in which these elements can interact, uh,
16:38
Speaker 1: you have would producing fire, Uh, fire produces earth av
16:44
Speaker 1: as an ash, Earth produces metal, UM, metal produces water,
16:51
Speaker 1: water produces wood, metal producing water. Don't get that one,
16:55
Speaker 1: mm hmm, all the rest of them like yeah, made sense, Lie,
17:00
Speaker 1: refrigerator's metal and it has a water dispenser in the day. Yeah. Uh.
17:05
Speaker 1: And then you have the destructive. This is when it's
17:07
Speaker 1: bad chi. And if you look at the little illustration
17:10
Speaker 1: on how stuff works on the on the first one,
17:12
Speaker 1: you have this great circle of arrows and it's just lovely,
17:15
Speaker 1: and this other one has a a nasty bunch of
17:18
Speaker 1: arrows just laying all over one another, and it's just
17:21
Speaker 1: a big mess. Yeah, like um would burdens earth. Yeah,
17:26
Speaker 1: nobody wants that. Water douses fire. That's a clear one. Sure,
17:30
Speaker 1: um metal chops would, Yes, it does, it does. There's
17:34
Speaker 1: there's uh. So the the interaction between these elements in
17:38
Speaker 1: your house, or the way you arrange your house will
17:42
Speaker 1: determine whether these phases of CHI are destructive or productive
17:48
Speaker 1: in their interactions together. And if you have too much
17:51
Speaker 1: of one thing, you need to balance it out with
17:53
Speaker 1: something else productively exactly the other two for destructive. Our
17:57
Speaker 1: fire melts metal and earth blocks water like a damn.
18:01
Speaker 1: You don't want a damn. You want the water flowing. Baby.
18:03
Speaker 1: You know you forgot hulk smash? Is that the other one? Yea,
18:07
Speaker 1: the final one, and then uh, the yin yang. We
18:12
Speaker 1: can't go any further. Without mentioning that. No, it's basically
18:16
Speaker 1: a really clever conception of chi. Yeah, opposite states of cheek,
18:23
Speaker 1: light and dark, night and day, young and old man woman. Sure,
18:28
Speaker 1: and there there's actually a way that it's supposed to
18:31
Speaker 1: be properly represented. The white is supposed to be on
18:34
Speaker 1: top because the white represents in part heat, and the
18:38
Speaker 1: idea is that heat rises, but they're they're both constantly
18:41
Speaker 1: in motion. But if you ever see a yin and
18:44
Speaker 1: yang symbol displayed, though, the lighter one should be on top,
18:48
Speaker 1: that's right, and not only heat for the white, but
18:51
Speaker 1: masculinity and spirit and hardness and activity where it's yang
18:56
Speaker 1: by the way, Yeah, oh yeah, we didn't point that out,
18:58
Speaker 1: and it's not yang yang by the way. We I
19:02
Speaker 1: used to say it that way. I think everybody did it,
19:05
Speaker 1: sure at some point, and yeah, I quipped in my
19:08
Speaker 1: early forties, Um, it's yes. Uh. The yen h is femininity, femininity, matter, nighttime, coldness, softness, passivity,
19:22
Speaker 1: and as long as you want those things balanced and
19:24
Speaker 1: the way they just fit together in that little circle. Man,
19:27
Speaker 1: it's just like it's pleasing to the eye. And I
19:29
Speaker 1: think that's kind of says it all. You know, it
19:31
Speaker 1: just looks nice. It's not jagged. It's like it's like
19:35
Speaker 1: two people just cuddling up, you know, in the form
19:39
Speaker 1: of a tattoo you wish you hadn't gotten. That's right
19:43
Speaker 1: with some maybe Chinese characters that you don't know what
19:45
Speaker 1: they mean any longer. Uh there, Um, well, I guess
19:50
Speaker 1: we're the bagua right, Yeah, so this has made sense
19:54
Speaker 1: to me. Right. Um, Remember what we're dealing with here
19:57
Speaker 1: is she. She flows through the five elements, and you
20:00
Speaker 1: deal with the five elements in your house. To figure
20:03
Speaker 1: out where in your house you need a little more
20:06
Speaker 1: of one element than another, you have to construct a
20:10
Speaker 1: Bogua map. Yeah, like this is where the rubber meets
20:13
Speaker 1: the road. We've been talking in esoteric terms. But if
20:16
Speaker 1: you're like, great, dudes, what does this mean for my
20:18
Speaker 1: freaking living room? This is what it means for your
20:22
Speaker 1: freaking living room. Yeah. And the Bogua map is based
20:25
Speaker 1: on boxes squares. They're the basic units of um of
20:32
Speaker 1: Functionali nine squares three by three. Uh. And you take
20:36
Speaker 1: those squares and somehow this is really clever too. But
20:42
Speaker 1: even though there's nine squares, you can take them and
20:45
Speaker 1: turn them into a hexagon. If you take the center
20:48
Speaker 1: square and convert that into well as center, and then
20:52
Speaker 1: the eight boxes around it become eight sides of a hexagon.
20:56
Speaker 1: If you shave off a little here or there, and
20:59
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you have are is a bogwa. Yeah,
21:03
Speaker 1: and they can represent color as well as um these
21:08
Speaker 1: elements as well as for the actual map that you're
21:12
Speaker 1: going to use UM for laying out your home aspects
21:16
Speaker 1: of your life, like you know, career and wealth and uh,
21:21
Speaker 1: prosperity and love and marriage and things like that. Right,
21:24
Speaker 1: So there's multiple meanings. And it also is if you've
21:27
Speaker 1: seen the TV show Lost, they totally ripped it off
21:30
Speaker 1: with the dharma collective symbol. It is just that is
21:34
Speaker 1: nothing more than the bogwa grid with the yin yang
21:37
Speaker 1: in the center right, and the yin yang is frequently
21:41
Speaker 1: represented in the center is yellow correct, yep. Yellow is
21:45
Speaker 1: the center of the Bogua map, which is actually the
21:48
Speaker 1: center of this nine squared box called the low shoe
21:51
Speaker 1: square UM. And in each of the different boxes there
21:55
Speaker 1: is a static representation. So this is this is what
21:58
Speaker 1: you need to know about the Bagua map. It is
22:01
Speaker 1: hexagon that the placement is always the same what you
22:06
Speaker 1: do is you take your Bagua map and you oriented
22:09
Speaker 1: a certain way over your house, over your your actual
22:12
Speaker 1: house or the room in your house or something like that,
22:15
Speaker 1: and that's what changes. So if you look at the
22:18
Speaker 1: Bogwa square, the yellow is always center and then black,
22:21
Speaker 1: which represents water and career um is always at the bottom. Okay,
22:27
Speaker 1: yeah a k A supposed to be the entrance to
22:31
Speaker 1: that room or your home, Okay, exactly, So yeah, it's
22:35
Speaker 1: not necessarily always at the bottom, it's always at the entrance. Well,
22:38
Speaker 1: you placed the bottom at the entrance, so if I
22:41
Speaker 1: were to walk into my house, you can either visualize
22:44
Speaker 1: it or you can literally draw this uh square. You
22:48
Speaker 1: want the bottom which is uh the bottom, center is
22:52
Speaker 1: career or water. Bottom right is helpful people in travel,
22:57
Speaker 1: bottom left is knowledge and self cultivation. You just want
23:01
Speaker 1: to find out where your front door is. In my case,
23:03
Speaker 1: mine is pretty much in the center of my home,
23:06
Speaker 1: which would be career, but it could fall if your
23:10
Speaker 1: doors on your left, it would fall under knowledge and
23:12
Speaker 1: self cultivation. So it's it's not like you move the
23:15
Speaker 1: map over to to to help yourself out. Like where
23:19
Speaker 1: your door is is where it is. You can move
23:21
Speaker 1: it if you want, Yeah, you could move your door.
23:24
Speaker 1: But basically the map is just supposed to be static, okay.
23:29
Speaker 1: So and it's static, like you said, it's oriented um
23:32
Speaker 1: with the black on the entrance, right, no matter where
23:35
Speaker 1: the entrance is, the black is on the the black
23:39
Speaker 1: is there. So when you orient your your black box
23:43
Speaker 1: onto your entrance, what you're doing then is using your
23:46
Speaker 1: Bogwa map to show you how you need to change
23:50
Speaker 1: your house in order to maximize the flow of chee
23:54
Speaker 1: through it. Yeah, it's basically And by the way, you
23:57
Speaker 1: shouldn't supposedly use any additions build you should do those separately. Okay.
24:02
Speaker 1: So if you if you're living room has a big
24:05
Speaker 1: new addition to the lefty like, you shouldn't even include that.
24:08
Speaker 1: So basically you're what you're doing is you're you're dividing
24:10
Speaker 1: your space up into zones according to this grid. And
24:15
Speaker 1: so if you were to look at my house according
24:18
Speaker 1: to the low shoe square, uh, my TV would be
24:23
Speaker 1: in the wealth and prosperity corner, which is probably not good.
24:27
Speaker 1: You're gonna make money on TV. That didn't exactly happen. Uh,
24:33
Speaker 1: My couch is the knowledge and self cultivation. I'm not
24:36
Speaker 1: sure what that means. And then my sun room would
24:39
Speaker 1: be helpful people in travel, that's what that means either.
24:42
Speaker 1: And in the center is my coffee table. The if
24:45
Speaker 1: I wanted to have good cheat to have a yellow
24:47
Speaker 1: rug there, Yeah, but I don't, but you should. We
24:51
Speaker 1: have some nice tile squares of varying colors, so you
24:54
Speaker 1: can do that, chuck for every room of your house.
24:57
Speaker 1: And you're supposed to like, like you just said, well,
25:02
Speaker 1: now I know where I should put a yellow rug
25:04
Speaker 1: in my in my house, Like you would want to
25:05
Speaker 1: put that in the center of where the Bogua map
25:07
Speaker 1: falls over that room, right, Um you might also so
25:11
Speaker 1: for example, um, if you just kind of had a
25:14
Speaker 1: dead space where the red boxes which is for fame
25:18
Speaker 1: and reputation, and you want to foster that kind of thing, man,
25:21
Speaker 1: there's a dead space there. Um, you would put something
25:26
Speaker 1: like awards there, animal related items, maybe a stuff jackalopet
25:31
Speaker 1: or something would be a good spot for that or
25:33
Speaker 1: a good thing for that spot. Um. And so you
25:37
Speaker 1: basically what you're doing is using the Bogua map to
25:39
Speaker 1: say you're just cross referencing spots of your house. And
25:42
Speaker 1: when you add these things and basically do interior decorating. Um,
25:48
Speaker 1: you can maximize a floachi. Yeah, if you look at
25:52
Speaker 1: my master bedroom and bathroom, I have a bad functuation
25:56
Speaker 1: because right in that top left corner wealth and prosperity
26:01
Speaker 1: is my toilet. Oh yeah, so supposedly you're flushing it
26:04
Speaker 1: all down the toilet. They say you should not put
26:07
Speaker 1: your bathroom or your toilet specifically in your wealth grid
26:12
Speaker 1: right square. So what we've just described is what a
26:17
Speaker 1: Western practitioner would do, because again, Western functionali has a
26:22
Speaker 1: lot to do with interior decorating, and so too does
26:26
Speaker 1: to an extent um, traditional functional. But a traditional functional practitioner, Um,
26:33
Speaker 1: if they came to your house and they used the
26:35
Speaker 1: Bogua map over your house, they would they wouldn't just
26:39
Speaker 1: align it to an entrance. They would align it to
26:43
Speaker 1: a magnetic direction. I'm pretty sure it's north. I think
26:46
Speaker 1: I think you're right. But the black the black um
26:49
Speaker 1: square in the Bogua map would be oriented in that direction,
26:53
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't necessarily be facing your entrance. And so
26:57
Speaker 1: there's this kind of It reveals this really big distinct
27:00
Speaker 1: action between Western functual and traditional functual. Whereas with Western
27:04
Speaker 1: functually it's like, oh, we'll just line it up to
27:05
Speaker 1: the entrance, and maybe you've got a problem with your
27:08
Speaker 1: toilet flushing, your your fame away in your bathroom, or
27:11
Speaker 1: your money away in your bathroom. With traditional functual, there's
27:16
Speaker 1: no getting around it. It's once it lays over your house.
27:20
Speaker 1: According to Magnetic North, what it gives you a really
27:25
Speaker 1: clear picture of what you're gonna have to do, and
27:27
Speaker 1: you may have to tear down your house and start
27:29
Speaker 1: over and rebuild facing the right way. Um. It could
27:33
Speaker 1: reveal a lot of real problems with your house. Um,
27:36
Speaker 1: and you may have to fill in more areas than others.
27:39
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're just orienting each room based on its
27:42
Speaker 1: entrance like in Western functual, there's um, you're not gonna
27:47
Speaker 1: find quite as many problems in a lot more easy solutions.
27:50
Speaker 1: That makes sense also with a traditional functional consultant who
27:54
Speaker 1: um is basically telling you what you need to do
27:57
Speaker 1: with your house, they're gonna do research on your else
28:00
Speaker 1: itself too. They're gonna find out when it was built,
28:02
Speaker 1: when the roof wasn't closed. That's a big one too.
28:06
Speaker 1: And then they're going to also create this Baguo map
28:08
Speaker 1: and a chart based on Chinese astrology as well, because
28:12
Speaker 1: time factors in a lot with traditional functual way more
28:16
Speaker 1: than Western. Again, Western is very um, quick to the
28:19
Speaker 1: point and just put some stuff here. Like another example
28:24
Speaker 1: that people criticize Western functual and kind of point like
28:27
Speaker 1: it's just basically um. Interior design is plaid is considered
28:33
Speaker 1: a form of the wood element. So if you have
28:36
Speaker 1: too much plaid, like a plague couch in a room,
28:39
Speaker 1: you might need to encounter that with like a little
28:41
Speaker 1: fountain or something like that. But where where did the
28:44
Speaker 1: idea that plaid was would come from? It's definitely not
28:47
Speaker 1: traditional Chinese. I don't think so. I don't think they
28:50
Speaker 1: have plaid in China, do they? I don't think so.
28:53
Speaker 1: But that raises another thing to another criticism of Western
28:56
Speaker 1: functual is that very frequently um functual consultants in the
29:02
Speaker 1: West will be like, oh, you just need to add
29:04
Speaker 1: a food dog, you know, like that kind of lion
29:06
Speaker 1: looking dog. So you need to add some you've seen
29:09
Speaker 1: a million times. Is it like a little statue or
29:11
Speaker 1: something you need to add like some Chinese pottery jagon
29:15
Speaker 1: mural or something. Yea, and traditional functual practitioners are like, yeah,
29:20
Speaker 1: art counts, but um, it doesn't have to be Chinese. Right,
29:24
Speaker 1: So if you're consultant is selling you Chinese, aren't. This
29:28
Speaker 1: is right, this is essential. Yeah, that's not that's not
29:32
Speaker 1: correct with the red flag. Yeah alright, well we have
29:34
Speaker 1: some more um uh tips from funcui experts that will
29:40
Speaker 1: get to right after this. All right, so we're talking
30:05
Speaker 1: the Bagua grid. Like we said, it's all represented with
30:08
Speaker 1: the different colors. Those colors also correspond to numbers, and
30:12
Speaker 1: they also correspond to aspects of your life or chi
30:18
Speaker 1: sounds confusing, it kind of is. Yeah, let's just say it.
30:22
Speaker 1: But here are some things that functual practitioners say will
30:26
Speaker 1: help unlock that chi um black, which is your career. Uh.
30:31
Speaker 1: They say a fountain or a mirror might be a
30:34
Speaker 1: good thing to have. Their blue, which is skills and wisdom.
30:38
Speaker 1: Maybe that's where you put your computer workstation or your
30:40
Speaker 1: library okay yeah books, yeah, books green your family Maybe
30:47
Speaker 1: that's where you want to put your family photos and
30:49
Speaker 1: you want to arrange them nicely too. Yeah. Supposedly, if
30:53
Speaker 1: you have your family photos out of order in your
30:55
Speaker 1: green section, um, you're gonna have misbehaving kids. Yeah, actually
31:00
Speaker 1: that's the white zone. That's children. Oh sorry, that's okay,
31:03
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's that's that's what they say. If you
31:06
Speaker 1: want good kids, keep those photos nice. I'm not sure
31:10
Speaker 1: about that one. Uh, purple is your prosperity zone, and
31:14
Speaker 1: that's where you want to have it, says healthy plants.
31:18
Speaker 1: Don't put your dying plants there, or sailing ships. I
31:22
Speaker 1: guess that's just um sailing towards prosperity. I guess maybe
31:28
Speaker 1: don't don't put a painting of a sinking ship. No,
31:31
Speaker 1: that that's that is western function there. Yeah, sure that
31:36
Speaker 1: you don't like that. That whole kind of psychology would
31:39
Speaker 1: be detrimental to the health of the area. Yeah, why
31:43
Speaker 1: would you want that anyway though? Like good paints is
31:46
Speaker 1: sinking ship? Yeah? Um, a depressed sea captain probably would be.
31:51
Speaker 1: My guess. Red is famine reputation. That's where you want
31:55
Speaker 1: to put your various awards. Um, so yeah, we got
32:00
Speaker 1: a couple of those, and your jackalope head your jackalope yeah,
32:03
Speaker 1: animal animal related things. You're right, we should lay out
32:05
Speaker 1: our next studio, like according to funk dude, we totally should.
32:10
Speaker 1: You know, I just noticed is red supposedly is what
32:13
Speaker 1: you want to put on the back of your chair
32:14
Speaker 1: to block a bad cheek. And we've got a huge
32:17
Speaker 1: red foam thing in between us and Jerry. Oh wow,
32:20
Speaker 1: so we gotta get rid of that. Oh I was
32:22
Speaker 1: gonna say that explains why I've been able to put
32:24
Speaker 1: up with her cheek for so long. Now, Jerry, she
32:27
Speaker 1: is the good flow our way, So we need to
32:30
Speaker 1: open that up in our new place. Um. Pink love
32:35
Speaker 1: and relationships, that's where you want to put maybe photos
32:37
Speaker 1: of your family or paired items. Again with the family photos, yeah,
32:42
Speaker 1: I don't have that many family photos. Paradig items that's cute,
32:45
Speaker 1: that makes sense, like book ends, salt and pepper shakers. Uh.
32:51
Speaker 1: Boxing gloves, Um, that's where you hang your boxing gloves. Um.
33:00
Speaker 1: Remember Joe Garden from The Onion with those giant boxing
33:02
Speaker 1: gloves he had. Yeah, those were so much fun. He
33:04
Speaker 1: had a thing where he just wanted to get as
33:06
Speaker 1: many people to pose with those as possible and take
33:08
Speaker 1: a swing at him. Uh. White what we already mentioned
33:12
Speaker 1: with children or creativity, that's where you might want to
33:14
Speaker 1: put some art or pictures of your little brats, um,
33:18
Speaker 1: gray travel um or helpful people but you're souvenirs from
33:24
Speaker 1: Disneyland there and not just Disneyland any trip you've taken.
33:27
Speaker 1: Sure the Disney company wants you to just put Disney
33:30
Speaker 1: souvenirs there though. Uh. And yellow Finally, health um pottery
33:34
Speaker 1: and stone objects will help unlock your chee there. Yeah.
33:37
Speaker 1: But speaking of Disney Hong Kong, Disneyland, they apparently had
33:42
Speaker 1: a functuated expert consulted and uh they made some changes
33:46
Speaker 1: because of that consultation. Yeah. Probably that was probably a
33:49
Speaker 1: nice paying gig. The yeah, you know, because someone was
33:53
Speaker 1: like catchy yea or they were saying e jing anyway a.
34:00
Speaker 1: The the open on September twelfth, because they were told
34:04
Speaker 1: that was a lucky day according to the astrological chart.
34:06
Speaker 1: Their consultant drew up. They changed the entrance by twelve
34:10
Speaker 1: degrees obviously it was a traditional um functui practitioner uh,
34:17
Speaker 1: and added some boulders. Apparently one of the restaurants has
34:21
Speaker 1: a projection of a fire, which to me that wouldn't count,
34:25
Speaker 1: but maybe it does. That seems pretty Western to me
34:29
Speaker 1: because one of the big bases of Western function is psychology.
34:34
Speaker 1: If traditional function is based on magnetism and astrology. Western
34:41
Speaker 1: functui is based on psychology, and it is as simple
34:44
Speaker 1: as you don't put a painting of a sinking ship
34:47
Speaker 1: in the office of a business that's struggling to stay
34:50
Speaker 1: afloat because the mind makes those kind of associations and
34:54
Speaker 1: it messes up your cheek. That's right, um, And a
34:57
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff as well. Like we said, UM,
35:00
Speaker 1: I think, like you just mentioned maybe like it just
35:02
Speaker 1: seems like common sense. Um, like a horseshoe shaped building
35:07
Speaker 1: that opens up into a courtyard, it's gonna feel good,
35:11
Speaker 1: it's pleasing. Um. Functual practitioners say that's energy. Or hey,
35:16
Speaker 1: don't don't build a house on a dead end street, um,
35:19
Speaker 1: because it blocks the GI I had a friend who
35:22
Speaker 1: lived at a dead end street and it just felt
35:24
Speaker 1: like every time I went over there, I felt closed
35:27
Speaker 1: in and sort of weird. Did he end up killing
35:29
Speaker 1: his whole family? He did not. He did move though. Um.
35:33
Speaker 1: They were saved. They were thanks to him moving. Um
35:39
Speaker 1: your office A lot a lot of times these days
35:41
Speaker 1: people will um their new offices. They will take this
35:44
Speaker 1: into account. Some very famous people like Richard Branson and
35:47
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, who enlisted the help of punctual experts to
35:51
Speaker 1: design their offices because they want that Chi and ergo
35:55
Speaker 1: money flowing. Yeah, you don't have to be a Richard
35:57
Speaker 1: Branson or Donald Trump to arrange or office, whether it's
36:01
Speaker 1: a cubicle or what have you. UM, so that you
36:04
Speaker 1: can maximize the flow of chief, you want to do
36:06
Speaker 1: a little messing around. Supposedly, the one one one thing
36:10
Speaker 1: that you want to ensure as much as possible is
36:13
Speaker 1: that you're facing the entrance to your office. UM. That way,
36:19
Speaker 1: the chief flows correctly towards you, not towards your back.
36:23
Speaker 1: You don't want the chea at your back. No, remember
36:24
Speaker 1: the Southern China um, the Southern China Functui placement, the
36:31
Speaker 1: form school UM. Like you you put your the entrance
36:36
Speaker 1: of your house is facing away from a hill, so
36:39
Speaker 1: the back of your house backs up to a hill.
36:41
Speaker 1: So the chief flows correctly. Same thing. You want the
36:44
Speaker 1: entrance to your office to be flowing towards you, facing
36:47
Speaker 1: it if you If you can't do that, then you
36:50
Speaker 1: just put up a mirror so you can reflect the
36:53
Speaker 1: chief towards you. Yeah, that makes sense. Like you said,
36:56
Speaker 1: you want to put something red on the back of
36:57
Speaker 1: your chair to block the chief from your back. Yeah,
36:59
Speaker 1: I see now that they think about it, this isn't
37:01
Speaker 1: so bad in here because the the red is to
37:03
Speaker 1: our side. It's coming in that door and bouncing off
37:06
Speaker 1: of that right on to us. So Jerry's really the
37:08
Speaker 1: one is getting the short end of the cheese stick here,
37:11
Speaker 1: really short short into the cheese stick. Um. What else
37:16
Speaker 1: can you do? You can put a fountain or a plant. Um, honestly,
37:19
Speaker 1: water and wood. Uh. And they said even the picture
37:22
Speaker 1: of a waterfall in your cubicle could help your chi
37:26
Speaker 1: your workplace. Che Again, there's a lot of disagreement about
37:31
Speaker 1: what works and what doesn't with traditional function. It's like
37:35
Speaker 1: you need to know where magnetic north is and you
37:38
Speaker 1: need to orient your building according to that, and whatever
37:41
Speaker 1: you do inside is almost irrelevant. Yeah, get rid of
37:44
Speaker 1: those fluorescent lights though they all agree on that. Sure
37:48
Speaker 1: know anything about cheat to know that fluorescent lights are
37:50
Speaker 1: terrible for you? Agreed? Do you anything else? No? U,
37:54
Speaker 1: this is it's pretty good overview, I think, right, sure,
37:58
Speaker 1: you feel good about it. I feel better than I expected.
38:02
Speaker 1: How's your g It's fine? Yeah, all right, it's it's
38:06
Speaker 1: not out of balance, it's not jumping for joy. It's
38:08
Speaker 1: just it is today got you. Uh. If you want
38:13
Speaker 1: to know more about chi or fung shui or any
38:17
Speaker 1: stuff like that, you can type those words in the
38:19
Speaker 1: search bart how stuff works. And since I said that
38:21
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this
38:26
Speaker 1: g e D success story. Hey, guys, got my g
38:30
Speaker 1: E D way back in so I could attend college.
38:33
Speaker 1: Back then, the University of Illinois Chicago co Flames allowed
38:37
Speaker 1: you and as a freshman, if you graduated high school
38:39
Speaker 1: and had a pulse, they called the student body. After
38:42
Speaker 1: the first year, though you didn't perform, you're out. I
38:45
Speaker 1: did reasonably well there and ultimately ended up at the
38:47
Speaker 1: University of Cambridge in England, got my pH d in
38:50
Speaker 1: archaeology there and worked in the field for a few years. Um.
38:54
Speaker 1: I am now a stay at home dad of three boys, five,
38:56
Speaker 1: three and one living in uh Karl's Rule, Germany. One
39:01
Speaker 1: of the things I love most about the American education
39:03
Speaker 1: system is that a guy who dropped out of high
39:05
Speaker 1: school at seventeen still have the opportunity to attend college
39:08
Speaker 1: and ultimately end up with a PhD from one of
39:11
Speaker 1: the greatest universities in the world. Thanks for another great episode.
39:15
Speaker 1: Guys's been listening since two thousand eight and actually remember
39:18
Speaker 1: the before Chuck days. Uh and that is from Chris,
39:22
Speaker 1: So way to go, Chris, Way to go, Chris. That
39:26
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome story. G D archaeologists stay at home
39:30
Speaker 1: dad five three in one sounds like he's doing it right.
39:33
Speaker 1: Nice job, Chris. If you want to let us know
39:35
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39:38
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39:41
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