Feng Shui Today

Feng shui is much more than just a debunked way to magically arrange furniture.

By Brian Dunning via skeptoid
Listen here or read transcript below

Today we’re going to push our couch a bit to the left, move our little Costco water fountain from one side of the room to the other, then clench our hands in joy as we begin to realize the wonderful benefits we’ve just conferred upon ourselves: longer life, great wealth, and influence. For we’ve just practiced a bit of feng shui (pronounced fung shway), the Chinese art of geomancy, using the Earth’s energies to supercharge our lives with qi. Though some take it quite seriously, most find feng shui a bit silly, but few are aware of the true impact it has had on both Eastern and Western cultures. Today we’re going to look past the both the skepticism and the belief, and learn the true significance of feng shui.

Dick Van Dyke’s home had terrible feng shui.

Feng shui, as we know it today, is largely a child of Western esotericism; more specifically, the New Age movement. It was introduced to Americans at the height of the New Age delirium in the mid-1970s. President Richard Nixon’s 1972 state visit to China, which no president had ever done before, was instrumental in triggering the publishing and entertainment industries to enthusiastically embrace all things China, to satisfy the public’s ravenous hunger for Eastern mysticism. The TV series Kung Fu with David Carradine came out that same year; the first acupuncture schools opened in the United States in 1974; and the first English language edition of A Barefoot Doctor’s Manual was published. At least, about a third of it was published; 600 pages of conventional medical information was cut out, leaving only the traditional remedies. Western New Age audiences were in love with the idea of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which they saw as more spiritually fulfilling and enlightened. Little did they realize that what they considered “enlightenment” was the result of censoring out 600 pages from a 900-page book — in other words, “endarkenment”.

This was the Western environment into which feng shui was introduced.

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