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https://fengshui.info/sources/

Sources · 189 works

What we read, and how we use it.

Every article lists the works it draws on. Here is the whole bibliography together, sorted by what kind of authority each carries. A Tang-dynasty siting text, a 1996 paperback and a sleep study are three different things, and the site tries never to let one borrow the weight of another.

Primary texts

The texts the tradition itself cites. Read in translation, with the translator named.

  1. Guo Pu (attributed), Zangshu (葬書, the Book of Burial) (4th century; received text later). English translation by Stephen L. Field, 2003. The text that names the practice: qi scatters on the wind and is held by water. The attribution to Guo Pu (276–324) is traditional; the text as we have it took shape after him. Cited in 25 articles A flat, read from start to finishA history of feng shuiA house, read from start to finishChoosing a home: reading the siteFeng shui in the cityHiring a practitionerPlanting by directionQi, and what the word does and 17 more
  2. Vitruvius, De architectura (On Architecture) (c. 20 BCE). Translated by Morris Hicky Morgan, Harvard University Press, 1914; by Ingrid Rowland, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Book I on the healthy site and the winds, Book VI on which rooms face which way: the West’s own siting manual, older than any Chinese one that survives whole. Cited in 1 article Siting elsewhere
  3. Zhuangzi (attributed), Zhuangzi (莊子) (4th to 3rd century BCE; received text 3rd century CE). English translation by Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, 1968. Chapter 22, Knowledge Wandered North, on a human life as a gathering of qi that disperses at death: the sentence behind the tradition’s use of the word. Cited in 1 article Qi, and what the word does
  4. Confucius (attributed), Lunyu (論語, the Analects) (5th to 3rd century BCE). English translation by D. C. Lau, Penguin, 1979. Book 17, on the purple of the day usurping the place of vermilion: the correct colours and the intermediate ones, as a matter of order. Cited in 3 articles Colour by elementThe house for old ageThe household gods
  5. Martin Palmer (editor and translator), T’ung Shu: The Ancient Chinese Almanac (1986). Rider, London. The almanac in translation: the day officers, the yellow and black days, the directions of the year’s spirits and the calendar of what each day is fit for. Cited in 8 articles Choosing a dayMoving houseOn the roadThe baby’s roomThe Four PillarsThe house through the yearThe household godsThe twelve animals
  6. Anonymous, Yijing (易經, the Book of Changes) (Zhou dynasty core, with later commentaries). Richard Wilhelm’s German translation (1924), rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes (1950). The source of the eight trigrams and their images. Feng shui borrows the trigrams; it does not derive from the divination system. Cited in 3 articles Numbers, floors and doorsUnderstanding the BaguaYin and yang in a room
  7. Ji Cheng, Yuan Ye (The Craft of Gardens) (1631). Translated by Alison Hardie, Yale University Press, 1988. The Ming manual of garden making, ending with the chapter on borrowed scenery: what a window or a gate can be cut to frame beyond the wall. Cited in 4 articles Planting by directionThe gardenThe outsideWindows
  8. Wen Zhenheng, Zhang wu zhi (長物志, Treatise on Superfluous Things) (c. 1620–1627). Studied and partly translated in Clunas 1991. The Ming connoisseur’s manual: the studio and its desk, the couch, the window and the few objects a scholar’s room should hold. Cited in 8 articles Art, images and objectsDesk placementFire in the housePlanting by directionPlantsThe furniture of the traditionThe house through the yearThe student’s desk
  9. Ji Yun and the editors of the imperial library, Siku Quanshu zongmu tiyao (四庫全書總目提要, Annotated Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) (1782). Presented to the Qianlong emperor; standard modern edition Zhonghua Shuju, Beijing. The catalogue of the imperial library, which sorted Chinese writing into four branches and shelved the Book of Burial and the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of the Dwelling under the Masters, among the numerical arts, on the shelf for the siting of houses and graves, with the editors’ note that the practice is old, its attributions doubtful and its effects unproved. Cited in 1 article Feng shui and religion
  10. Shen Zhureng (沈竹礽), compiled by his son Shen Zufu, Shen shi xuan kong xue (沈氏玄空學, The Shen Family’s Xuan Kong Studies) (1927). Shanghai; many reprints, Taipei and Hong Kong. The book that made the Flying Star method public: Shen Zhureng’s notes on the Xuan Kong texts, the periods, the charts and the readings of the star pairs, compiled after his death in 1906 and printed in 1927. Every modern manual of the method descends from it. Cited in 1 article Flying Stars: how a chart is built

Scholarship

Historians and anthropologists writing about the practice from outside it. Our default for any claim about what happened when.

  1. Derk Bodde, Festivals in Classical China: New Year and Other Annual Observances during the Han Dynasty (1975). Princeton University Press. The annual round of the Han household and court reconstructed from the texts: the New Year, the exorcisms, the sweeping, the seasonal rites that the later almanac kept. Cited in 4 articles The baby’s roomThe house through the yearThe household godsThe twelve animals
  2. Ole Bruun, An Introduction to Feng Shui (2008). Cambridge University Press. The clearest short history: origins, the schools, the twentieth-century suppression and the revival. Our default reference for historical claims. Cited in 42 articles A history of feng shuiAnimals in the houseArt, images and objectsBeams and cornersChoosing a dayChoosing a flatChoosing a home: reading the siteEight Mansions and 34 more
  3. Charles F. Emmons, Hong Kong’s feng shui: popular magic in a modern urban setting (1992). Journal of Popular Culture, 26(1), 39–49. A survey of Hong Kong residents and businesses on what they consult the geomancer for: the shop, the office, the opening date and the till. Cited in 19 articles Animals in the houseChoosing a dayChoosing a flatFeng shui and religionFeng shui beyond ChinaFeng shui in the cityHiring a practitionerSelling a house and 11 more
  4. Ole Bruun, Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divination between State Orthodoxy and Popular Religion (2003). NIAS Press. Fieldwork on how the practice actually lived in rural China through periods when it was illegal. Cited in 17 articles A flat, read from start to finishA history of feng shuiA house, read from start to finishFeng shui and religionFront door feng shuiHiring a practitionerMoving houseRented homes and 9 more
  5. Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, Chinese Imperial City Planning (1990). University of Hawai‘i Press. The imperial capitals from the Zhou to the Qing as plans: the axis, the walls within walls, the palace at the centre facing south, and Beijing’s Yuan and Ming layers. Cited in 1 article Feng shui in the city
  6. Alfred Schinz, The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China (1996). Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart. The planning of Chinese cities from the Shang to the Qing, with the cosmological grid, the walls and the feng shui corrections, the pagoda at the river’s turn among them, read from hundreds of town plans. Cited in 2 articles Feng shui in the cityThe remedies
  7. Johannes Prip-Møller, Chinese Buddhist Monasteries: Their Plan and Its Function as a Setting for Buddhist Monastic Life (1937). G. E. C. Gad, Copenhagen, and Oxford University Press; reprinted Hong Kong University Press, 1967. The measured survey of the monasteries of the lower Yangtze by a Danish architect: the axis, the halls in order, the pond before the gate and the mountain behind. Cited in 1 article Feng shui and religion
  8. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (editors), Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China (1988). University of California Press. The funeral as the rite that made the Chinese Chinese: the sequence from the death to the burial and the tablet, the geomancer’s place in it, the mourning grades and the household’s year, from Song texts to Hong Kong fieldwork. Cited in 1 article The house in mourning
  9. Rubie S. Watson and Patricia Buckley Ebrey (editors), Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (1991). University of California Press. The Chinese marriage from the Song to the twentieth century: the exchanges, the rites, the bride’s entry into the groom’s household and what it made of her; the ethnography behind the wedding’s order. Cited in 1 article The house for a wedding
  10. Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals: A Twelfth-Century Chinese Manual for the Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals, and Ancestral Rites (1991). Princeton University Press. The translation of Zhu Xi’s manual of the rites, whose funeral chapter has the mourners choose the burial ground by divination; the Confucian licence for the geomancer. Cited in 4 articles Feng shui and religionThe guest roomThe house for a weddingThe house in mourning
  11. Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (2009). Harvard University Asia Center. The Nationalist campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s against superstition, the 1928 standards for temples and cults, and where geomancy fell in them. Cited in 1 article Feng shui and religion
  12. Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (1966). Athlone Press, London. The anthropology of the southern Chinese lineage, with a chapter on the geomancy of graves as a competitive resource between families; the source for the reading of grave feng shui as a map of family claims. Cited in 5 articles Feng shui and religionThe house for a weddingThe house in mourningThe remediesThe yin house
  13. Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (1991). Polity Press, Cambridge; University of Illinois Press. The study of Wen Zhenheng’s Treatise on Superfluous Things (c. 1620s), the Ming manual of taste that describes the scholar’s studio, its desk and its objects; read here for what the classical house asked of a room for work. Cited in 15 articles Art, images and objectsBedroom feng shuiClutter and orderDesk placementFire in the houseHome office feng shuiPlanting by directionPlants and 7 more
  14. Stephan Feuchtwang, An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese Geomancy (1974). Vithagna, Vientiane; reissued by White Lotus, 2002. The structure of the system as practitioners use it: the compass rings, the correlations, the logic of a reading. Cited in 28 articles A flat, read from start to finishA house, read from start to finishDrawing your planEight MansionsFeng shui beyond ChinaFinding your facing directionHiring a practitionerQi, and what the word does and 20 more
  15. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 2: History of Scientific Thought (1956). Cambridge University Press. Places geomancy within Chinese correlative thinking: yin–yang, the five phases, the trigrams. Cited in 13 articles Colour by elementFeng shui beyond ChinaQi, and what the word doesQuestions people askSiting elsewhereThe body and the houseThe dragon veinsThe Five Elements and 5 more
  16. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 4, part 1: Physics (1962). Cambridge University Press. The history of the magnetic compass in China, including its use by geomancers before navigators. Cited in 5 articles A history of feng shuiFinding your facing directionThe luopan and the twenty-four mountainsThe yin houseWhat is feng shui?
  17. Li Shu-hua, Origine de la boussole II: Aimant et boussole (1954). Isis, vol. 45, no. 2. The Chinese texts on the lodestone and the needle, from the Lunheng to Shen Kuo, read in order. Cited in 1 article The luopan and the twenty-four mountains
  18. Klaas Ruitenbeek, Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China: A Study of the Fifteenth-Century Carpenter’s Manual Lu Ban jing (1993). Brill, Leiden. The carpenters’ classic translated and studied: the Lu Ban ruler, the sizing of doors and the builder’s own feng shui. Cited in 7 articles Beams and cornersBuilding and renovatingDoors inside the houseFront door feng shuiMoving houseThe household godsThe shop
  19. Michael John Paton, Five Classics of Fengshui: Chinese Spiritual Geography in Historical and Environmental Perspective (2013). Brill. Translations of five foundational texts with commentary; our check on what the classical literature actually says. Cited in 24 articles A flat, read from start to finishA history of feng shuiA house, read from start to finishEight MansionsFeng shui beyond ChinaFlying Stars: how a chart is builtHiring a practitionerQi, and what the word does and 16 more
  20. Richard J. Smith, Fortune-tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society (1991). Westview Press. Feng shui among the other divinatory arts of late imperial China. Cited in 23 articles A flat, read from start to finishA history of feng shuiA house, read from start to finishChoosing a dayFeng shui and religionFeng shui beyond ChinaFlying Stars: how a chart is builtHiring a practitioner and 15 more
  21. Richard J. Smith, Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in China (2008). University of Virginia Press. The history of the Book of Changes and its readers, from the Zhou core to the Song diagrams and the geomancers’ use of the trigrams. Cited in 3 articles The textsUnderstanding the BaguaYin and yang in a room
  22. Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality (1979). George Allen and Unwin, London. The Han bronze mirrors and their TLV pattern read as a map of the cosmos; the mirror as a cosmological object before it was a cure. Cited in 2 articles MirrorsThe four animals
  23. Wang Shixiang, Classic Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties (1986). Joint Publishing, Hong Kong; English edition Han-Shan Tang, London. The canopy bed and the alcove bed of the Ming, the bed as a room within a room, from the scholar who catalogued the furniture. Cited in 3 articles Bedroom feng shuiThe furniture of the traditionThe living room
  24. Ronald G. Knapp, Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia: The Eclectic Architecture of Sojourners and Settlers (2010). Tuttle. The shophouses, mansions and clan halls the Chinese built from Penang to Manila: plans, sections and the households in them, with the air well and the five-foot way surveyed house by house. Cited in 5 articles The balconyThe guest roomThe restaurant and the caféThe shopThe shophouse
  25. Julian Davison, Singapore Shophouse (2010). Talisman. The Singapore shophouse from the 1820s to conservation: the five-foot way of Raffles’s town plan, the air well, the roofed-over wells of the twentieth century, street by street. Cited in 3 articles The balconyThe shopThe shophouse
  26. Ronald G. Knapp, Chinese Houses: The Architectural Heritage of a Nation (2005). Tuttle. Twenty houses across China surveyed with plans and photographs, the Beijing courtyard, the Huizhou sky-well house and the Fujian earth building among them. Cited in 6 articles Siting elsewhereThe classroomThe gardenThe houses the manuals were written forThe shared flatThe shophouse
  27. Gideon S. Golany, Chinese Earth-Sheltered Dwellings: Indigenous Lessons for Modern Urban Design (1992). University of Hawai‘i Press. The cave dwellings and sunken courtyards of the loess plateau, measured, with their climate performance. Cited in 1 article The houses the manuals were written for
  28. Ronald G. Knapp, China’s Old Dwellings (2000). University of Hawai‘i Press. The courtyard house and its hall surveyed region by region: the tang open to the court, the altar table on the wall of honour, the seats along the sides. Cited in 13 articles Building and renovatingDoors inside the houseFire in the houseNumbers, floors and doorsSofa placementThe classroomThe furniture of the traditionThe house for old age and 5 more
  29. Ronald G. Knapp, China’s Living Houses: Folk Beliefs, Symbols, and Household Ornamentation (1999). University of Hawai‘i Press. The rites and charms of the Chinese house: the raising of the ridge beam, the door gods, the mirrors and the almanac’s days. Cited in 25 articles Animals in the houseBeams and cornersBuilding and renovatingChoosing a dayColour by elementFire in the houseMoving houseOn the road and 17 more
  30. Robert L. Chard, Rituals and scriptures of the stove cult (1995). in David Johnson (ed.), Ritual and Scripture in Chinese Popular Religion, Chinese Popular Culture Project, Berkeley. The Kitchen God and his cult: the paper image over the stove, the annual report to heaven, and the rules of conduct at the hearth that the tradition’s stove rules descend from. Cited in 1 article The kitchen
  31. Vibhuti Chakrabarti, Indian Architectural Theory: Contemporary Uses of Vastu Vidya (1998). Curzon Press, Richmond. The vastu treatises, the mandala and its deities, and what the modern Indian architect and consultant make of them. Cited in 1 article Siting elsewhere
  32. Hong-key Yoon, The Culture of Fengshui in Korea: An Exploration of East Asian Geomancy (2006). Lexington Books. The practice outside China, and a careful account of the Form School’s landform vocabulary. Cited in 9 articles Choosing a home: reading the siteFeng shui beyond ChinaSiting elsewhereThe command positionThe dragon veinsThe four animalsThe schools of feng shuiThe yin house and 1 more
  33. Bernard Frank, Kata-imi et kata-tagae: étude sur les interdits de direction à l’époque Heian (1998). Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Japonaises (first published 1958). The directional taboos of Heian Japan: the closed directions, the detours taken to avoid them, and the court bureau of yin and yang that kept the calendar of them. Cited in 1 article Feng shui beyond China
  34. Stephen Skinner, Terrestrial Astrology: Divination by Geomancy (1980). Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. The history of the sand divination the word geomancy meant, from the Arabic ‘ilm al-raml through the twelfth-century Latin translations to Renaissance Europe; the source for why the word fits feng shui badly. Cited in 1 article Siting elsewhere
  35. Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (2000). University of California Press. The examination system and the academies that prepared for it: the halls, the cells, the seating and the god of literature. Cited in 1 article The classroom
  36. A. C. Graham, Yin-Yang and the Nature of Correlative Thinking (1986). Institute of East Asian Philosophies, Singapore. The standard account of yin–yang and the Five Phases as a system of correlations rather than a physics. Cited in 2 articles Colour by elementYin and yang in a room
  37. Joseph Needham, with Wang Ling, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth (1959). Cambridge University Press. The River Chart and the Lo Shu as number diagrams, the magic square of three, and the number lore the Song philosophers built on them. Cited in 3 articles Numbers, floors and doorsThe Four PillarsThe twelve animals
  38. Schuyler Cammann, The magic square of three in old Chinese philosophy and religion (1961). History of Religions, 1(1), 37–80. The Lo Shu and the He Tu traced from the Han to the Song: how the square came to carry the directions, the elements and the seasons, and when the dot diagrams were first drawn. Cited in 1 article Numbers, floors and doors
  39. Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker, The Chinese Sky during the Han: Constellating Stars and Society (1997). Brill, Leiden. The twenty-eight lunar mansions and the four palaces of the Han sky reconstructed from the texts and the tomb finds; the lacquer box of the Marquis Yi of Zeng with the dragon and tiger flanking the Dipper. Cited in 1 article The four animals
  40. Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage (The Rites of Passage, translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee, 1960) (1909). Émile Nourry, Paris; University of Chicago Press, Chicago. The three-part shape of a rite of passage, separation, threshold and incorporation; the chapter on the threshold treats the door, the crossing and the house-entering rites of many peoples. Cited in 1 article Moving house
  41. Ho Peng Yoke, Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching Out to the Stars (2003). RoutledgeCurzon, London. The calculating arts of fate, the stems and branches, the Taiyi, Qimen and Liuren systems and the Ziping method of the Four Pillars, set out by a historian of Chinese science. Cited in 1 article The Four Pillars
  42. David N. Keightley, Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China (1978). University of California Press. The oracle bones of the late Shang, in which the sixty-day cycle of stems and branches is already the way days are named, three thousand years before the almanac. Cited in 1 article The Four Pillars
  43. Sarah Handler, Austere Luminosity of Chinese Classical Furniture (2001). University of California Press. The classical pieces one by one, the bed, the screen, the chair, the table and the cabinet, with how each was used in the room and what it said about the person who sat or slept in it. Cited in 2 articles Fire in the houseThe furniture of the tradition
  44. Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, Chinese Furniture: Hardwood Examples of the Ming and Early Ch’ing Dynasties (1971). Random House, New York. The first Western catalogue of the hardwood furniture: the joinery, the woods, the forms and their dates. Cited in 1 article The furniture of the tradition
  45. C. P. FitzGerald, Barbarian Beds: The Origin of the Chair in China (1965). Cresset Press, London. How the Chinese came down from the mat and up onto the chair between the Han and the Song, and what the change did to the height of every table, window and door in the house. Cited in 1 article The furniture of the tradition
  46. Stephan Feuchtwang, Popular Religion in China: The Imperial Metaphor (2001). Curzon Press, Richmond. The gods of the household and the locality as a bureaucracy in the image of the empire: the Kitchen God who reports, the earth god who governs a ground, the ancestors who are fed; the anthropologist who also analysed geomancy. Cited in 4 articles Animals in the houseFeng shui and religionThe house in mourningThe household gods
  47. Arthur P. Wolf, Gods, ghosts, and ancestors (1974). in Arthur P. Wolf (editor), Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, Stanford University Press, 131–182. The three kinds of spirit a Chinese household deals with and how it tells them apart by what it offers and where: gods as officials, ancestors as kin, ghosts as strangers. Cited in 1 article The household gods
  48. David K. Jordan, Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors: Folk Religion in a Taiwanese Village (1972). University of California Press. Fieldwork on the household altar and the village temple: the gods on the shelf, the ancestral tablets, the bed mother and the earth god, and the divination that goes with them. Cited in 2 articles The baby’s roomThe household gods
  49. Emily M. Ahern, The Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village (1973). Stanford University Press. The ancestral tablets and the graves of a Taiwanese village: who is worshipped, by whom, where, and what the living believe the dead can do for them and to them. Cited in 1 article The household gods
  50. Maggie Keswick, The Chinese Garden: History, Art and Architecture (1978). Academy Editions, London; revised edition Frances Lincoln, 2003. The standard English history of the Chinese garden, with a chapter on the garden’s cosmology and its debt to feng shui, the rock as mountain and the pond as the water before the hall. Cited in 2 articles The balconyThe garden
  51. Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (1996). Duke University Press; Reaktion Books, London. The Ming garden as its owners used it, for fruit and rent as much as for contemplation; the trees and their meanings, and the garden manuals read against the estate accounts. Cited in 3 articles Animals in the housePlanting by directionThe garden
  52. Barbara L. K. Pillsbury, “Doing the month”: confinement and convalescence of Chinese women after childbirth (1978). Social Science and Medicine, 12(1B), 11–22. The confinement month as Chinese women in Taiwan and Hong Kong kept it: the closed warm room, the forbidden wind and water, the foods, and the reasons the women themselves gave. Cited in 1 article The baby’s room
  53. Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (1985). University of California Press. The history of Chinese medical thought: the medicine of systematic correspondence, qi, the channels and the five phases, and how the Han built the table that the house and the body still share. Cited in 1 article The body and the house
  54. Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine (1999). Zone Books, New York. Why the Chinese physician read a pulse and a colour where the Greek cut a body: the vocabulary of qi, wind and flow, and what it made visible. Cited in 1 article The body and the house
  55. Nathan Sivin, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China (1987). Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan. The classical system as it is taught and practised today, with a translation of the modern textbook’s account of qi, yin and yang and the five phases. Cited in 1 article The body and the house

Early Western accounts

Nineteenth-century Western descriptions. Prejudiced, and precious as records of practice before the modern revival.

  1. M. T. Yates, Ancestral worship and fung-shuy (1868). The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, 1. A missionary’s early account of feng shui as an obstacle to the mission, five years before Eitel’s book; the first sustained Western description of the practice as a system. Cited in 1 article Feng shui and religion
  2. Ernest J. Eitel, Feng-Shui: or, The Rudiments of Natural Science in China (1873). Lane, Crawford & Co., Hong Kong. The first book-length Western account, by a missionary. Condescending in tone, valuable as a record of nineteenth-century practice. Cited in 11 articles A history of feng shuiFeng shui and religionFeng shui beyond ChinaSiting elsewhereThe dragon veinsThe four animalsThe luopan and the twenty-four mountainsThe remedies and 3 more
  3. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Explication de l’arithmétique binaire (1703). Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, Paris. The paper on binary arithmetic, with Leibniz’s reading of the Fu Xi sequence of hexagrams, sent to him from Beijing by Joachim Bouvet, as binary numbers. Cited in 1 article Understanding the Bagua
  4. J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, vol. III (Book I, part III: The Grave; chapter XII, “Fung-shui”) (1897). E. J. Brill, Leiden. A long, detailed and sceptical description of the system as practised in Fujian in the 1880s. Cited in 12 articles A history of feng shuiFeng shui and religionFeng shui beyond ChinaThe dragon veinsThe four animalsThe house in mourningThe household godsThe luopan and the twenty-four mountains and 4 more

Practitioner manuals

Manuals by people who teach and practise. Cited for what a school says, never as evidence that the world behaves that way.

  1. Sarah Rossbach, Feng Shui: The Chinese Art of Placement (1983). E. P. Dutton. The book that carried Thomas Lin Yun’s Black Sect teaching to the English-speaking world; the origin of most Western bagua-map conventions. Cited in 12 articles A history of feng shuiAnimals in the houseBeams and cornersFeng shui beyond ChinaFront door feng shuiQuestions people askThe entranceThe mirror facing the bed and 4 more
  2. Sarah Rossbach, Interior Design with Feng Shui (1987). E. P. Dutton. The room-by-room application of the Black Sect method. Cited in 40 articles A bed for twoArt, images and objectsBeams and cornersBed placementBedroom feng shuiBuilding and renovatingChoosing a home: reading the siteClutter and order and 32 more
  3. Stephen Skinner, Guide to the Feng Shui Compass: A Compendium of Classical Feng Shui (2008). Golden Hoard Press. The most thorough English description of the luopan and its rings; our reference for the twenty-four mountains. Cited in 31 articles A bed for twoA flat, read from start to finishA history of feng shuiA house, read from start to finishBeams and cornersBed placementChoosing a dayChoosing a flat and 23 more
  4. Stephen Skinner, The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui (1982). Routledge & Kegan Paul. An early, serious English introduction to the classical system. Cited in 11 articles Choosing a home: reading the siteFeng shui beyond ChinaFeng shui in a dayLevels, ceilings and floorsSha, the catalogue of faultsThe dragon veinsThe entranceThe mirror facing the bed and 3 more
  5. Eva Wong, Feng-shui: The Ancient Wisdom of Harmonious Living for Modern Times (1996). Shambhala. A compass-school practitioner’s account of the Form and Compass methods, clear about which is which. Cited in 50 articles A bed for twoA flat, read from start to finishA house, read from start to finishArt, images and objectsBeams and cornersBed placementBedroom feng shuiBuilding and renovating and 42 more
  6. Derek Walters, The Feng Shui Handbook (1991). Thorsons. A widely read practitioner manual; useful for the popular reception of the compass methods. Cited in 6 articles Drawing your planEight MansionsFinding your facing directionFlying Stars: how a chart is builtThe house for a weddingThe twelve animals
  7. Lillian Too, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui (1996). Element Books. The best-selling popular manual. Cited here as a record of what the popular tradition says, not as an authority on what the classical one does. Cited in 55 articles A bed for twoA flat, read from start to finishA house, read from start to finishAnimals in the houseArt, images and objectsBeams and cornersBed placementBedroom feng shui and 47 more
  8. Stephen Skinner, Flying Star Feng Shui (2003). Tuttle. A practitioner’s manual for the Xuan Kong method: periods, charts, the twenty-four mountains, annual stars. Cited for what the school teaches, not as evidence for it. Cited in 4 articles Finding your facing directionFlying Stars: how a chart is builtThe Lo Shu squareWater features
  9. Eva Wong, A Master Course in Feng-Shui (2001). Shambhala. The most systematic English exposition of the Compass School, including worked Flying Star charts. Cited in 3 articles Finding your facing directionFlying Stars: how a chart is builtThe Lo Shu square

Research

Peer-reviewed work on light, sleep, noise, sightlines and clutter. None of it is research on feng shui; all of it bears on advice feng shui gives.

  1. Norman E. Rosenthal and colleagues, Seasonal affective disorder: a description of the syndrome and preliminary findings with light therapy (1984). Archives of General Psychiatry, 41(1), 72–80. The paper that named the winter depression and treated it with bright light in the morning. Cited in 2 articles The house for old ageThe house through the year
  2. Jay Appleton, The Experience of Landscape (1975). John Wiley. The prospect–refuge hypothesis: people prefer positions from which they can see without being seen. The basis on which the command position is plausible. Cited in 23 articles A bed for twoBed placementBedroom feng shuiChoosing a flatDesk placementEvidence and feng shuiFeng shui for better sleepHome office feng shui and 15 more
  3. Kathleen M. Beauchemin and Peter Hays, Sunny hospital rooms expedite recovery from severe and refractory depressions (1996). Journal of Affective Disorders, 40(1–2), 49–51. Patients admitted for severe depression to the sunny rooms of a ward were discharged about two and a half days sooner than those in the dull rooms. Cited in 2 articles Evidence and feng shuiRecovering at home
  4. Jeffrey M. Walch and colleagues, The effect of sunlight on postoperative analgesic medication use: a prospective study of patients undergoing spinal surgery (2005). Psychosomatic Medicine, 67(1), 156–163. Patients on the bright side of a ward after spinal surgery took about a fifth less pain medication than those on the dim side. Cited in 2 articles Evidence and feng shuiRecovering at home
  5. Roger S. Ulrich, View through a window may influence recovery from surgery (1984). Science, 224(4647), 420–421. Patients with a window view of trees recovered faster than those facing a brick wall. Small, famous, much replicated in spirit. Cited in 11 articles Art, images and objectsChoosing a home: reading the siteEvidence and feng shuiPlanting by directionPlantsQi, and what the word doesRecovering at homeThe balcony and 3 more
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  32. HM Government, The Building Regulations 2010, Approved Document B: Fire safety, volume 1, dwellings (2019 edition, amended 2022). Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, London. The escape window for a bedroom that is not on the ground floor or is below it: a clear opening of at least 0.33 square metres, no dimension under 450 millimetres, the sill no higher than 1,100 millimetres above the floor; a basement bedroom must have one, or a protected stair. Cited in 1 article Levels, ceilings and floors
  33. HM Government, The Building Regulations 2010, Approved Document K: Protection from falling, collision and impact (2013 edition, with 2015 amendments). Department for Communities and Local Government, London. The English standard for stairs in dwellings: the rise and going, the pitch, the sixteen risers a flight may have before a landing, the handrail. Cited for the numbers, as a representative modern code. Cited in 2 articles Hallways and stairsLevels, ceilings and floors
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  89. Robert Gifford, The consequences of living in high-rise buildings (2007). Architectural Science Review, 50(1), 2–17. A review of the research on high-rise living: on balance less satisfactory than low-rise for most people and for families with children in particular, with more fear of crime and fewer neighbourly ties; the view and the quiet of height are the gains. Cited in 4 articles Choosing a flatFeng shui in the cityThe neighboursThe shared flat
  90. Shawn Carlson, A double-blind test of astrology (1985). Nature, 318, 419–425. Astrologers matching natal charts to personality profiles did no better than chance; the standard test of astrology as a claim about persons. Cited in 1 article The Four Pillars
  91. Daniel M. Goodkind, Creating new traditions in modern Chinese populations: aiming for birth in the Year of the Dragon (1991). Population and Development Review, 17(4), 663–686. Births in Chinese populations rise sharply in Dragon years as families time conceptions to the animal; the zodiac as a demographic force. Cited in 1 article The Four Pillars
  92. Naci Mocan and Han Yu, Can superstition create a self-fulfilling prophecy? School outcomes of Dragon children in China (2020). Journal of Human Capital, 14(4), 485–526. Dragon-year children did better in school and in the national examinations than those born in the years either side, because their parents expected more of them and invested more; the effect disappears once the parents’ expectations are held constant. Cited in 1 article The Four Pillars
  93. World Health Organization, WHO Global Report on Falls Prevention in Older Age (2007). World Health Organization, Geneva. Falls as the leading cause of injury in people over sixty-five, about a third of whom fall each year; the home, the stair and the light as the settings that can be changed. Cited in 2 articles Recovering at homeThe house for old age
  94. Lesley D. Gillespie, M. Clare Robertson, William J. Gillespie, Catherine Sherrington, Simon Gates, Lindy M. Clemson and Sarah E. Lamb, Interventions for preventing falls in older people living in the community (2012). Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 9, CD007146. The Cochrane review of a hundred and fifty-nine trials: exercise and home-safety assessment with modification both reduce falls, the second most for people at high risk and when done by an occupational therapist. Cited in 1 article The house for old age
  95. John Templer, The Staircase: Studies of Hazards, Falls, and Safer Design (1992). MIT Press. The research on stair falls: the missed step at the top and the bottom, the riser and tread that the foot can trust, the rail that is reached for, the nosing that is seen. Cited in 2 articles A house, read from start to finishThe house for old age
  96. Peter R. Boyce, Human Factors in Lighting (2014). CRC Press, third edition. The lighting text: the eye’s loss of light and contrast with age, the two to three times more light an older eye needs for the same task, glare and the night. Cited in 3 articles LightingRecovering at homeThe house for old age
  97. M. Powell Lawton and Lucille Nahemow, Ecology and the aging process (1973). in Carl Eisdorfer and M. Powell Lawton (editors), The Psychology of Adult Development and Aging, American Psychological Association, 619–674. The environmental docility hypothesis: the less a person’s competence, the more their behaviour is decided by the environment, so that a room matters more with age. Cited in 1 article The house for old age
  98. Michael I. Norton and Francesca Gino, Rituals alleviate grieving for loved ones, lovers, and lotteries (2014). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(1), 266–272. Experiments in which performing a ritual after a loss, any ritual, reduced grief and restored a sense of control; the psychology behind the altar without the theology. Cited in 1 article The household gods
  99. Hashem Akbari, Dan M. Kurn, Sarah E. Bretz and James W. Hanford, Peak power and cooling energy savings of shade trees (1997). Energy and Buildings, 25(2), 139–148. Measured houses in Sacramento: shade trees on the west and south cut cooling energy by about thirty per cent and peak demand by a similar share; the west tree does most of the work. Cited in 2 articles Planting by directionThe balcony
  100. Gordon M. Heisler, Energy savings with trees (1986). Journal of Arboriculture, 12(5), 113–125. The review of what trees do to a building’s energy: windbreaks on the windward side reduce winter heating, shade on the sunny sides reduces summer cooling, and the placement decides which. Cited in 4 articles A house, read from start to finishPlanting by directionThe balconyThe remedies
  101. Rachel Y. Moon, Rebecca F. Carlin, Ivan Hand and the American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Sleep-related infant deaths: updated 2022 recommendations for reducing infant deaths in the sleep environment (2022). Pediatrics, 150(1), e2022057990. The safe-sleep guidance: on the back, on a firm flat surface, in the parents’ room but not their bed for at least six months, nothing soft or loose in the cot, the room not overheated. Cited in 1 article The baby’s room
  102. Masako Tamaki, Ji Won Bang, Takeo Watanabe and Yuka Sasaki, Night watch in one brain hemisphere during sleep associated with the first-night effect in humans (2016). Current Biology, 26(9), 1190–1194. The first-night effect measured: on the first night in a new place one hemisphere sleeps more lightly and wakes faster to sound, a watch the brain keeps in an unfamiliar room. Cited in 1 article On the road
  103. Jim Waterhouse, Thomas Reilly, Greg Atkinson and Ben Edwards, Jet lag: trends and coping strategies (2007). The Lancet, 369(9567), 1117–1129. The review of jet lag and its remedies: the body clock, the light windows to seek and avoid by direction of travel and zones crossed, and what melatonin and timing can and cannot do. Cited in 1 article On the road
  104. M. David Egan, Architectural Acoustics (1988). McGraw-Hill, New York. The acoustician’s handbook: what a wall, a door and a gap do to sound in decibels, why a hollow door with a gap beneath it stops almost nothing and a solid door with seals stops a conversation. Cited in 1 article Doors inside the house
  105. Luna B. Leopold, M. Gordon Wolman and John P. Miller, Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology (1964). W. H. Freeman, San Francisco. The standard text on how rivers shape their beds: the meander, the fast current on the outside of a bend that cuts the bank and the slack water on the inside that builds the bar, and the floodplain the two make together. Cited in 1 article The water dragon
  106. Marty Ahrens and Radhika Maheshwari, Home Structure Fires (2021). National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, Massachusetts. The American figures: cooking the leading cause of home fires, smoking and heating the leading causes of deaths, most deaths at night in homes without a working smoke alarm, and the candle in the bedroom the cause that a rule would prevent. Cited in 2 articles Fire in the houseThe shared flat
  107. Stephen Kerber, Analysis of changing residential fire dynamics and its implications on firefighter operational timeframes (2012). Fire Technology, 48(4), 865–891. Full-scale burns of modern furnished rooms: flashover in three to five minutes where the old furnishings gave thirty, and a closed door holding a room survivable while the room beyond it burned, the finding behind closing bedroom doors at night. Cited in 2 articles Fire in the houseThe shared flat
  108. World Health Organization, WHO Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality: Selected Pollutants (2010). World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen. The indoor guidelines for the pollutants a house makes: nitrogen dioxide from gas stoves, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, benzene and the rest, with the levels and the sources, the kitchen first among them. Cited in 1 article The air in the house
  109. Peter Strøm-Tejsen, David Zukowska, Pawel Wargocki and David P. Wyon, The effects of bedroom air quality on sleep and next-day performance (2016). Indoor Air, 26(5), 679–686. Students sleeping in their own bedrooms with the window open and closed: about two thousand four hundred parts per million of carbon dioxide closed against eight hundred open, and better sleep quality and next-day concentration with the window open. Cited in 1 article The air in the house
  110. Olli A. Seppänen, William J. Fisk and Mark J. Mendell, Association of ventilation rates and CO2 concentrations with health and other responses in commercial and institutional buildings (1999). Indoor Air, 9(4), 226–252. The review that fixed the thousand-parts-per-million line: above it, in most studies, more sick-building symptoms, more absence and worse perceived air; below it, fewer. Cited in 3 articles Evidence and feng shuiThe air in the houseThe shophouse
  111. Ta-Chang Lin, Guha Krishnaswamy and David S. Chi, Incense smoke: clinical, structural and molecular effects on airway disease (2008). Clinical and Molecular Allergy, 6, 3. The review of incense smoke: fine particles, carbon monoxide and volatile compounds at levels that in a small closed room exceed those of a busy street, and the airway effects measured in the households that burn it daily. Cited in 1 article The air in the house
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