What I Got From Studying the Lü School of Natural-Science Yixue

Translator's note. The last piece in this set is a student's account, written in 2023 from Shijiazhuang. It is useful as a portrait of the market the earlier essays are arguing against: a decade of accumulated technique — Human Design, astrology, Zi Wei Dou Shu, Eight Mansions feng shui, numerical energy, auspicious-date almanacs — a good deal of money spent, a WeChat avatar changed for the whole family, a child renamed, and then a serious reversal anyway. Her account of the bedroom she was moved into by Eight Mansions logic is the most concrete thing in the collection about what a wrong layout looks like in practice. Terms: ren-water day master (壬水日主) is the day stem of a Bazi chart, read as the person's core element; life's weak plank (生命短板) is the Lü-school term for the weakest point in a chart; auspicious sand (吉砂) is a mountain or raised form in a favourable position.

For as long as I can remember I have been drawn to Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. Over the years I met a good many teachers of the Yijing, and I was especially interested in reading fate. But I never met one I was fated to study with, and never stayed with anyone long.

After my child was born I began on Western systems — Human Design, astrology, the various arts of reading a life. Then in the second half of 2021 I saw an online course platform advertising introductions to Zi Wei Dou Shu and the Yijing, and signed up immediately. That was my way in. From zodiac placement to reading WeChat avatars, from Eight Mansions feng shui to numerical energy, I kept acquiring new pieces of the traditional Yijing repertoire. I spent money that was, by my standards, far from trivial on rearranging my home. I spent several thousand yuan changing my own and my family's WeChat avatars, and had my child's name changed.

All that time I was also consulting the almanac for dates. I would not clean the house without choosing an auspicious day. I had worked myself into a state.

Then the reversal

I thought my life was trending upward. I had adjusted the house, the avatars, the numbers — adjusted until there was nothing left to adjust. And then, out of nowhere, a serious misfortune came down on me. It caused me a long stretch of mental and financial trouble. Alongside it came a run of things going wrong, and repeated setbacks in my academic work and career. It was a very dark period.

That was when a fellow student sent me the open-access courses on Bazi and feng shui by Mr Lü Wenyi. Looking for a way out, I began at once — listening day and night. Listening while driving, while eating, while doing housework, while lying in bed, while working during the day. His new way of seeing things was strange and riveting. Hearing him name the faults of traditional yixue so bluntly was a kind of relief.

From then on I studied the Lü school of natural-science yixue, and the deeper I went the more absorbed I became. I dropped all of the traditional material and focused on this alone. In daily life I stopped choosing auspicious dates for trivial things. A great deal of compulsive behaviour fell away, and with it a great deal of unnecessary friction at home.

What I studied

I went from the Bazi and feng shui courses on to date selection, the collected Bazi lectures, the 290-chart Wanfa Guizong system, and Shenbing Qimen Dunjia — all online. With a job, a family and a small child, I could not yet attend the in-person courses. But the online material has helped me enormously.

Later I was lucky enough to make contact with Mr Men Jian'en. Whenever something would not resolve, I would ask him privately, and every time he answered patiently. It was a real gain. He is a generous, patient and responsible teacher.

The bedroom

Looking back at the way I arranged the house under the traditional system, I hardly know whether to laugh or cry.

On Eight Mansions logic we moved out of the bedroom with the best feng shui in the house and into the southeast bedroom, the worst room in the flat. On the north side of that southeast bedroom there are two bathrooms — powerful, inauspicious water. And my husband and I are both ren-water day masters. My child's zi water is the sitting branch, which is the weak plank in that chart.

If we had gone on sleeping in that room, I genuinely do not want to imagine what would have followed.

What changed

Working from the Lü-school layout, and with Mr Men's guidance, I rearranged the feng shui of the flat. Since then a number of things I had wanted for years have come about.

We had been trying for a second child without success. Through the layout, and through the zhuke — controlling-subject — method, the second pregnancy came when we hoped for it.

My own research and my work have benefited enormously. Only today I had a signal from my superiors that a promotion may be possible. Thinking about it, it is probably because the hour branch, which represents social position, has been laid out as a strong auspicious sand.

I am sharing this because the change in my own fortunes has been real to me, and because I would like to pass on something good. I hope more people benefit from it.

Hong Yu, Shijiazhuang, Hebei — 5 October 2023