Ancestral Graves and the Family Home

Translator's note. One of the earliest pieces in the collection — signed Guangzhou, July 2003 — and still the clearest statement of the ranking that the whole system rests on. The argument is mechanical rather than mystical: the dead stay put, so a point's energy acts on them without interruption, and they pass it on; the living move about the house all day, so they never sit in one place long enough to receive a steady influence. Hence the grave decides the constitution and the house decides the clothes. The well-and-water metaphor at the end also answers the obvious objection about reusing a good grave.

Yin dwelling means the ancestral grave; yang dwelling means the family home.

Over many years of work in this field I have met every kind of person and every kind of theory. On the relation between yin-dwelling and yang-dwelling feng shui there have always been three positions: those who know yin dwelling deny yang dwelling; those who know yang dwelling deny yin dwelling; and those who know both decline to say which weighs more — they argue yin dwelling is decisive when discussing yin dwelling, and yang dwelling is decisive when discussing yang dwelling, according to the needs of the moment.

In my view there are only two ways to establish whether a theory is correct: the test of practice, which is fundamental, and sound theoretical derivation. There is no third way. On that basis, let us examine which of the two weighs more in its effect on a person's fate.

1. In practice. With yin-dwelling feng shui we can accurately judge the fortune, misfortune, wealth or poverty, honour or meanness, longevity or early death of each branch of a dead man's descendants; and from the configuration of the grave and the magnitude of the sand-and-water energy we can accurately judge the degree of each. With yang-dwelling feng shui this is very difficult. The qualitative judgement and the quantitative estimate are next to impossible — unless one resorts to the trade's trick of inferring from ordinary life: see a mansion, conclude wealth; see a thatched hut, conclude poverty; see parents a hundred years old, conclude longevity; see no sign of children's things in the house, conclude there are no children. What yang-dwelling feng shui can do is judge, year by year, which aspect — money, office, illness, injury — will be favourable or not; and in that it is accurate enough.

2. In theory. The difference follows from an everyday fact. The occupants of a house do not sit motionless at one spot for a whole day, a whole month, a whole year. They are constantly changing position — changing the origin. Because the origin keeps changing, the occupants cannot receive the continuous influence of the energy at any one point in the house, which weakens the effect of the house on them, since every point within a house has its own energy.

With a grave it is otherwise. The dead do not move. The energy of a given point acts on them exclusively, persistently, without interruption. And so the dead — bones or ashes — transmit that fixed, exclusive, persistent energy to their descendants without interruption, and that information is not blocked by time or space. (Objectively, the longer the time and the greater the distance, the more the influence weakens; but between a dead man and his closest kin the weakening is almost nil. Only where the generational gap is very large is the weakening obvious.)

This determines that yin-dwelling feng shui is fundamentally decisive, while yang-dwelling feng shui produces only a change of degree — small ailments, small misfortunes, small disasters. It cannot be decisive.

From this analysis it should be easy to see that a person's wealth or poverty, honour or meanness, longevity or early death, fortune or disaster, and the degree of each, are entirely decided by the ancestral grave (including the environment of the pregnancy). Yang-dwelling feng shui, apart from the pregnancy environment, only makes the fortune of the grave fluctuate in degree.

In plain terms: the grave decides a person's physical constitution; the house is only the clothes he wears — of different thickness, different quality, different pattern. Whether a man is healthy is not decided by his clothes.

At this point someone will ask: on your reasoning, if another person were buried in the same grave as a provincial governor's ancestor, would another provincial governor be born? A good question, and a far-sighted one. Understand that the energy contained in any thing is a fixed quantity, not unlimited. A well holds a fixed amount of water; it cannot be drawn on for thousands of years without end. In the same way, the auspicious or inauspicious energy stored in any grave is finite. If that energy has been fully drawn out by the first governor, then burying another person there will certainly not produce a second one. But if the first governor's family drew out only a small part of the energy the grave holds, then after a second person is buried there, his descendants will certainly include a governor or someone of higher rank — because most of the energy remains unused, and is left for others to draw on.

Put it another way: if the energy of a grave is ten thousand yuan, and the first dead man's descendants spent only three thousand, then the second man's descendants still have seven thousand to spend. But if the first family spent all ten thousand, then the second man's descendants have nothing but poverty.

There are a great many cases in practice that bear this out. This has been a digression, but perhaps it will be of some use to students and friends.