Dragon or Snakes?

There have been much stir about water techniques in Feng Shui in these recent years. First there area few people who cried ‘Dragon’. In claiming and promoting that these water features or water exits to be exact, in a property will turn an ordinary folk into a millionaire. The formula is a ‘guarded’ secret and to learn it actually you have to spent quite a lot of hard earn cash and time by attending a series of seminar.

Well it is fair trade or a good marketing technique as for many Feng Shui enthusiast including this writer, attended that series of seminar. At that time the hype was so intense, even though I am practicing San Yuan Feng Shui locally and abroad, I just have to see or ‘experience’ what is this great formula all about. As a firm believer in there is no free lunch, I paid in full and went through that series of seminar.

To be brief, I had a great time, met a lot of good people and was taught the infamous formula for the water exits or publicly known as Water Dragon. The formula is based on the system of Di Li Wu Jue or plainly translated as the Five Rhymes of Earth Principles

Recently however one of the marketer is now claiming as these Feng Shui techniques is nothing to be surprised about but was oversold. 

Even though the Di Li Wu Jue formula leave much to be desired, at the least the instructor who taught it, firmly believe in it, whereas the ‘Dragon Slayer’ could know it all along that it was lizard technique but only chose to reveal it now. 

Reasoning

However that was not the reason I choose to respond with this article. I am writing because if the media only has one voice for Feng Shui, sooner or later it will be taken as the ultimate truth. The article that was written is NOT the complete picture on water exits. And because it was written in English, not many competent Feng Shui professionals would be able to respond due to their limitation in the English language.

What is Water Exits?

Before we go further into an objective view on water exits, there are few points we have to be clear on which are

1. What is the purpose of water in Feng Shui?
2. What is the purpose of water exits in Feng Shui?
3. What is the origin of water exit principle in both San Yuan and San He?

Water in Feng Shui acts as a retainer or what we would call Qi gathering or attracting element. Water in Five Elements represents emotions, intelligence and also love. It is the Chinese belief that when you have intelligence and emotions, wealth will flow to you naturally. That is why water equates wealth in Feng Shui.

Water is also able to slow down and direct Qi in a specific direction hence when you have a specific direction for water entering or exiting a Feng Shui SETUP then you are able to maintain the Qi composition of the setup. Why? Because the Qi is directed in a way that it does not harm the Feng Shui setup.

In simple terms, lets say you have a Fire Setup for the Feng Shui, and you have water exiting in the Fire direction, it means that the flushing of Qi out at the Fire direction is actually weakening your Fire Setup. Hence no matter how good your direction of the door or sleeping position in Yang House Feng Shui, that water exit will in the long term harm your Fire Setup and cause problems to those living at that property.

It is similar to constantly feeding you with vitamins and high nutritious food but at the same time a knife is stab on your stomach and slowly oozing blood out of your system.

Step Back in Time!

Therefore if we go back a few hundred years in time, then try to imagine masters (both San Yuan and San He) who understand this principle will then try to write it down for the future generations of practitioners to learn and use it in their practice. Anyhow as it get pass down through different schools and generations, the original EXAMPLE became a FORMULA.

So when studying in the 21^st century, most students just want a formula and try to match their own or clients’ property to the formula they have been taught.

What is the tragedy? In Feng Shui, you will be encountered with almost infinite numbers of different environment setup and also occupants with infinite differences in their own Qi or BaZi setup.

The original principal of water exits is only utilized after the Master have a clear grasp of the Qi flow of the environment that forms the Element of the Feng Shui setup and NOT the FACING of the property that determines the water exits. When the previous Masters wrote down those examples, their aim is for the students to understand the principle of water exits and NOT to learn it blindly as a formula!

Back to the Future

Now there are practitioners that claim water exits is not important and it is a big lie to just pay high fees to your Feng Shui consultants who shows you where to have the water exit from your property. A drain is a just drain!? How far from Feng Shui truth can you get? Yes! Di Li Wu Jue is a cheap formula that is widely available and also YES! we have to take the environment as priority before the drain.

But ignoring the exits or the drain is a grave mistake for any level of Feng Shui practitioners.

Exit or No Exit in Hong Kong

Skyline View of Hong Kong Island

Coming from a Feng Shui lineage in Hong Kong, I can understand that a practitioner will not look at drain exits seriously if they have not practiced Yin Feng Shui or just know Yin Feng Shui through books or principles. It is also where originally water exits principles were derived from, which is the setup of Yin Feng Shui.

 
Typical Water Exit of a Chinese Grave

Water exits in Yin and Yang Feng Shui has 2 levels of auditing, which is internal exits and external exits. External exits are the formation of the environment and the natural flow of Qi that enters and exits. This sometimes could cover and area of 1-2 km.

Internal water exits are the ones that you can easily notice when you look at a Chinese grave setup or even at Christian graveyards. It is those tiny holes to release the water from a specific grave. Knowing where to exit for a grave setup is the difference between an amateur and a professional.

In Hong Kong, most of the residences would be living on apartments and flats. My clients who can afford landed property prefer to live in an apartment that would cost easily around USD1-2 million. So there are no external water exits to change or recommend, however internal water exits are still a critical factor.

Landed properties would usually be located either in Hong Kong Island or at New Territory in areas such as Yuen Long or Tin Shui Wai. So when we are auditing landed property even in Hong Kong, drain exits plays a critical factor towards the Feng Shui of the property. Of course it is not so highly named as Water Dragon, but plainly as water exits.

In contrast, most of my client prefers to stay in a landed property in Malaysia and we (meaning myself and all the lineage practitioners with a span of over generations) have witness countless amount of Feng Shui gone wrong because the drain exit literally ‘drain’ the Qi setup of the property.

My house has a continuous water features in which the water flowing in front of my main entrance and exiting in a specific direction according to San Yuan principles. When guest or friends looked at it, I would tell them it is a Water Dragon. It is close to my house entrance, but it does not caused the ‘cut feet’ effect. The term is also misinterpreted and it would require another article just explain about the real conditions and effects of ‘cut feet’ water.

Water exit of my house. A drain is just a drain?  

To be as objective as possible here are the criteria to consider when you are thinking about water exits or water feature on a landed property

1. Do not implement water feature or water exits by just using formula alone. That is a sure fire way for Feng Shui suicide. Di Li Wu Jue ‘formula’ is base on facing to implement the exits. So chances for error in causing harm to the Feng Shui setup are very high.
2. Take into consideration the landforms such as land embrace, high-low of the land and also the surrounding roads.
3. Consider the BaZi of the occupants if it is a water feature, activating the wrong type of Qi could also lead to more problems rather than solutions.
4. This last criteria supersede all the above, if you are unable to notice or grasp the external Qi setup of a particular Feng Shui property, do not attempt any of the above.

A Water Feature and Exit Combo that was built for my client 

When you are an amateur, a drain looks like a drain. When you know theories and principles, a drain seems like a drain. When you are practicing professionally a drain is not just a drain, it is a Qi flush that could eliminate your Feng Shui setup!