Feng Shui book review part 2

Here’s the promised follow-up to Feng Shui book review.

Feng-Shui: The Ancient Wisdom of Harmonious Living for Modern Times by Eva Wong

I thought I had found a jewel when I started to read this book. I was quite fed-up with the very Westernized view of Feng Shui reflected in the earlier books so I was thrilled that Author Ms. Wong was the total opposite. 

Ms. Wong grew up in Hong Kong and was a student of her grand uncle, who was real old-school Feng Shui master. 

More than half of the book is about landscapes and mountains. Interesting, but as I cannot move mountains or change the place where I live, there was no practical help there for me.

Having ploughed through all the theory related to landforms it was finally time for some real action: Setting up a geomagnetic chart. 

This turned out to be a huge challenge and I was totally lost. 

In my desperation I turned to the World Wide Web and tried to download a Feng Shui compass to at least confirm my calculations. It ended up with my Internet browser being hijacked.

Eventually I found an iphone app that gave the same result as my manual calculations, so I was pleased and continued reading. 

But then the book suggested I should mount a saw inside my home to counterfeit the destructive energy from a branch of a tree on the outside of my home I started to read the next Feng Shui book.

It was Feng Shui Your Life by Jayme Barrett. 

A beautiful book, with compassionate writing and very artistic and uplifting pictures but unfortunately I can only recommend it to rich housewives (preferably American).

Here's why: If you were to follow the advice given by Ms. Barrett you'd have to have fresh flowers and (healthy) plants in every room, or even in each corner of every room. Now imagine the time it would take to maintain all those flowers and plants, not to mention the costs -unless you were married to a gardener or a flower-shop owner.

There was a lot of repetition in the book (this seems to be a common problem in the world of Feng Shui books), and some irritating inconsistencies. Sometimes wood delivers earth energy but on the next pages wood delivers tree-energy. A picture in a bedroom has the text "job" and "cigarettes" on it (can't be good for a restful night), and a picture on a kitchen wall says „Be healthy, drink milk". 

The idea of having a cat flap installed on your toilet door made me laugh - my cats would always be there to keep me "company" -so no thanks! This idea comes from the belief that toilets suck energy (and one's fortunes), so the lid and the door must be closed at all times. But in another part of the book suddenly toilet energy travels towards you. And also this problem must be remedied with a healthy plant and fresh flowers...

Why you should be American to be able to implement the advice from this book? Ms. Barrett suggests you should place your paycheck into a red envelope and keep it there for 24 hours before you deposit it into your bank account. 

Well I can't do such a thing because I'm European and my salary appears on my bank account as if by magic...

I really do not wish to be mean, I am convinced all the intentions of Ms. Barrett are pure, she has a good heart and probably it is wrong of me to expect anyone to create a Feng Shui book that fits into all cultures. 

My personal favourite of all Feng Shui books I've read so far is Fengshui-aapinen by Anja Banks.

It is only available in Finnish, and I have this creeping feeling I might be biased... so my recommendation for anyone (from anywhere) interested in the art of Feng Shui is: 

Feng Shui That Makes Sense: Easy Ways to Create a Home That Feels as Good as it Looks by Cathleen McCandless.

Next I plan to write more about some personal and hilarious Feng Shui mishaps and about how nearly all our electrical appliances went haywire after I started fenging our home (thankfully I do not believe in ghosts!) and also something about air purifying plants.