Black Hat Sect

A lot of people that have been interested in Feng Shui have become either disturbed by the many different systems or disappointed by the subjectivity of rituals in some branches of modern systems that call themselves Feng Shui.

Ask yourself, how can all houses – as according to the Black Hat Tantric Buddhist Sect system – have the life aspect of ‘Career’ in the same location, seen from the main entrance, without regarding actual directions.

Do all houses have their main entrance in the North? How come terms as Career, Fame, Marriage etc. have never been around before 1986.

Professor Thomas Lin Yun invented his system around 1986. He never said that his system was to replace the real thing, on the contrary in his latest book with Sarah Rossbach he clearly states:

“My Ba Gua is an internalized ba gua”.

His Ba Gua merely shows an intuitive approach of Time and Space and – as I will show further down - follows our path through life from baby, adult and elderly.

It is believed that there are 120 different schools of Feng Shui. To claim that one of them is the true school and that another is false may limit our search for the truth and close our minds and hearts to all the undiscovered Time and Space systems before they were even revealed to us. When we discuss or criticize a system, we should focus on its foundation and principles, not its practitioners. This chapter looks at the foundation of Lin Yun’s system and Traditional systems.

It is vital to understand that each system has its own merits and legitimacy. We are all different and so different systems emerged and different methods appeal to us.

Intellectual masters produce intellectual systems, to which people with an intellectual interest will be drawn. Intuitive masters produce intuitive systems, to which people with an intuitive approach are drawn. We may all be intellectual and intuitive enough to see that one cannot go without the other.

The styles and techniques of different systems may be greatly influenced by culture, geography, climate, diet, philosophy, religion, sociology, and a multitude of other factors. Understanding and appreciating different approaches may unify the different peoples of the world. Let your choice or preference for a certain system not be based on the rejection of something else, but try to follow down to earth principles and techniques.

Professor Lin Yun himself does not discard any other system. However, rather than by Heaven Luck and Earth Luck, his approach is from the perspective of Human Luck. His is a purely intuitive approach of Time and Space, taking Human Qi as its starting point.

Anyway, however bent, there is no way this system should carry the name Feng Shui, because it may be a lot, but it is not anywhere Feng Shui. It halts Time and Space, it halts the earth rotation, and it proclaims its treatments valid without limitation as to time periods.

Some practitioners of the Lin Yun system even disregard the Chinese Compass altogether, claiming it is not relevant. One quite influential and internationally renowned teacher in the Black Hat system once explained to me exactly why we should not even bother with the Chinese compass: “because the Chinese compass shows the Former Heaven (static) sequence of trigrams as the first ring, the Later Heaven (dynamic directions) sequence of trigrams being shown only as the second ring”.

Study anything you can obtain, analyze, evaluate, integrate that which works and discard that which does not. Both reason and intuition are valuable assets of human perception.

In Xuan Kong Feng Shui, the Qi pattern of a house is determined relative to Heaven Qi (Time aspect) and Earth Qi (orientation of the house as to earth magnetic forces ). Lin Yun’s interpretation places Human Qi in a central position.

This must be by far the most important difference between Traditional forms of Chinese Feng Shui and the Black Hat system:

Black Hat
All houses are the same, Positions are found according to their main entrance.
All diagnosis and treatments then rely solely on each practitioner.
In other words, diagnosis and treatments done by ten practitioners will all be different.

Traditional Feng Shui
All houses are different.
Diagnosis and treatment follow certain universal principles, not relying solely on the practitioner.
In other words, have your audit done by a traditional consultant, then have a master fly in from Hong Kong and he will agree with the first consultant.

Is this an exaggeration? Let me show you an example from one of the Black Hat classes I once attended. The example also leisurely shows how perhaps not the person with the best technique or the theoretically most experienced person, but rather the most intuitive person will be in front of a Black Hat class.

We all know that beams are a no-go. They impose a downward pressure.

Once I attended a practical tour in a Black Hat class and the host of the house asked if her son could have his bedroom in the attic.

The attic was in a pointed roof, so with a lot of open wooden beams and triangles.

The teacher asked us to brainstorm over the issue and of course all immediately agreed that the boy could not have his bedroom there, until from somewhere in the rear a voice persisted: ‘But can’t you see, these beams are like the support of a body. They will be like the ribs to a body. The boy will be instead much supported sleeping here”.

Instead of turning their heads in disgust, people turned their heads in awe over this stupidity. Needless to say that this person added a lot of points in the eyes of her classmates and soon after that became a teacher.

According to Lin Yun’s system, a house is looked upon as a human body, with the main door seen as the ‘mouth of Qi’. So far, so good, but the system then fixes the directions of the Ba Gua. The system then also looses the idea of 45 degree sectors and draws a grid with nine equally shaped squares. Each sector in this grid reflects on a certain given Life Aspect, e.g. Fame, Marriage, Children, et cetera.

What you’ll get is an intuitional system through which to assess man’s relation to built structures and again, so far, so good. But then, calling it Feng Shui, however – and compared to traditional Feng Shui systems -, we’ll end up with an ‘easy for Westerners to chew’ non-system.

A step further, any exterior diagnosis and treatments will be just circumstantial and not put too much emphasis on, where Black Hat focuses on the interior and became an art of interior design.

Readers please don’t get me wrong. Deprived of its label ‘Feng Shui’ I believe Black Hat is a wonderful interpretation and system and well worth checking out.

Because it has a direct effect on Human Qi, the energy coming through the door is taken as the starting point. Even before the Life Aspects are being allocated to their respective sectors, certain changes are being made:

• Directions are pronounced static and are now seen independently of the horizon and the actual sun pattern.

• Earth magnetic field does not play a role at all.

• Directions and their attributes (organs, colors) are found relative to the entrance of house and rooms, rather than to their appointed directions.

• Palaces and sectors are now being referred to as ‘positions’.

• Huge emphasis is on so called ‘missing’ or ‘extended’ positions.

• Original Ba Gua and 45º directions change into a nine-grid pattern with equal sections.

• There is no understanding on flow of Qi within a house, all is just static.

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