Feng Shui History - How Feng Shui Started - Feng Shui Roots and Schools

As feng shui is becoming more and more popular in countries far away from China or Chinese influence, it is worth looking at its history and understand how feng shui started and why feng shui is bringing such powerful results when properly applied.

Feng Shui has a history of many thousands years, some say 2,000 years, some go as far as 5,000 years. As an organized body of knowledge feng shui was practiced since Tang Dynasty, where we can find early recordings about employing feng shui masters in selecting auspicious sites, as well as about feng shui texts being required reading for imperial exams (court of Emperor Hi Tsang, 888 A.D.)

One of the famous feng shui names recorded in the history of feng shui is Master Yang Yun Sang, who left a legacy of many classical feng shui texts and is considered the founder of the landscape school of feng shui.

Throughout his writing, Master Yang emphasized the importance of selecting an auspicious site that has dragon's energy, or dragon's breath, thus the careful examination of the shape of land formations - mountains, hills, valleys, as well as water formations and specifics. The vital energy, or Chi, contained in specific earth locations was described as finding the dragon and its lair, and natural formation where symbolic of animal shapes and energies, such as green dragon, white tiger, etc.

Three texts form the Master Yang's contribution to the foundations of feng shui, particularly the Form, or Landscape School of Feng Shui:

• Han Lung Ching (The Art of Rousing the Dragon)
• Ching Hang Ao Chih ( Methods of Locating the Dragon's Lair)
• I Lung Ching (Canons Approximating Dragons)