Heluo Articles - Southern Hemisphere and Universal Qi

Also Lindy Baxter – an exponent of the Southern hemisphere school – bases her ideas on the wrong hypothesis. Where ancient Chinese had been long aware of magnetic and geographic North and South, mrs. Baxter wrongly assumes:

“The bagua symbolizes conditions valid only in the North. People must have the receptiveness to modify when and where conditions vary. The bagua shows the progression of the seasons and the directions”.

The Ba Gua is not based on the progression of the seasons, as seasons and the Five Elements are just analogies to reflect on Qi realities that are far greater that what we can perceive with our senses.

When we base a theory on the wrong assumption, we can write a book of hundreds of pages, but surely whatever we produce henceforth will be inadequate.

But, you should not take anything from me as you should not take anything from any other teacher.

We should not be even looking into matters of Qi from a conceptual standpoint, because close observation of events themselves will show exactly how Qi works.

It is the kind of observation that will only come to you after long and thorough studies, meaning that the only escape from the Northern-Southern debate is through your own prolonged studies.

Whether you are this or that Nine Star Ki Number will be simply revealed by comparing your life events against the arrangements of Stars in the Luo Shu for any given time, be it a year, month or day.

Whether there is a difference in Feng Shui on the Southern hemisphere or not will be simply shown to you by drawing two Flying Star charts and examining the events in the house.
Whether there was a difference or not will be shown by whether or not your Feng Shui advice showed the desired result.
Let not teachers but the Luo Shu itself tell you Qi’s story.

One of the articles about the Southern-Northern debate is done by Cate Bramble and you can find it at http://www.qi-whiz.com
Look for her article Goin’ South (the website includes an option that you can click to show the article in Portuguese).

“On the terms of their own argument, Southern Hemisphere School theories do not apply to an entire hemisphere. Seasonal associations of the Later Heaven Sequence are secondary, arbitrary, and coincidental only for northern temperate zones.

The primary reference point is magnetic and cosmic north, which is valid for the entire Earth. This is the position held by traditional Feng Shui practitioners.

It is not valid to change an ancient system based solely on propositions built from secondary characteristics that exclude primary causes”.

“Recognize that the division of the Earth into hemispheres is a construct -- a product of human thinking, a mental note agreed upon by members of our civilization.
Just as we agree there are Northern and Southern Hemispheres, we also agree there are western and eastern hemispheres -- and all are the result of cartographic conventions, not real phenomena.
If you are a native of an equatorial country you are not aware of the Equator, for nothing marks its presence.
There are no sudden changes -- the Moon does not suddenly flip upside-down and the stars don't abruptly change. One cannot say that as soon as you cross the Equator the seasons suddenly shift from summer to winter or spring to autumn.

The idea of an Equator causes us to think in terms of southern and northern hemispheres.

Marking zero degrees longitude to coincide with Greenwich, England, causes us to think of eastern and western hemispheres, just as thinking of Rome as the ancient centre of Europe causes us to think in terms of Western and Eastern Europe and the Far East.

For the purposes of Feng Shui one could just as well divide the planet into three distinct zones: the polar (90 to 66 degrees, 30 minutes latitude), the temperate (66 degrees, 30 minutes to 23 degrees, 27 minutes latitude), and the tropic (23 degrees, 27 minutes South to 23 degrees, 27 minutes North).

These zones more precisely represent the climatic conditions of the Earth.

Each has distinct characteristics -- for instance, the change from the polar easterly winds to westerly winds of the midlatitudes and then to the easterly tradewinds of the tropics. The boundaries of these zones are marked by the solstices and the point where the winter sun never rises and the summer sun never sets.

By selecting the Equator as their reference point the Southern Hemisphere School is arguing an abstraction rather than something that is real. This is a classic error of basic logic”.

Most of the arguments to adopt a difference between both hemispheres are based on the observation of climatic difference and seasonal change. The rational here is that cold winds approach from the North on the Northern hemisphere and cold winds approach from the South on the Southern hemisphere.

We cannot base our Qi observations on this for simple reason that other regions may have their cold winds approach from the Northeast, the Northwest or Southwest even.
The ancient Chinese meant to associate Fire with one of the earth’s magnetic poles, Water was associated with the opposite earth pole.
Fire was not meant to point to actual fire, the sun or even warmth, Water was not meant to point to actual H₂O or even cold.
When we draw an imaginary line between the earth magnetic North pole and the magnetic South pole, we call this line Magnetic Meridian and this is the same for both hemispheres.

There is a difference between the geographical equator, which is just a conceptual approach and found by cartographers, and geomagnetic equator.

Geomagnetic equator is the imaginary great circle on the earth’s surface formed by the intersection of a plane passing through the earth’s center perpendicular to the axis connecting the North and South magnetic poles.

Please do internet web search on terms like magnetic pole, magnetic north, astronomical north, magnetosphere, sun flares, solar wind, sun spots, magnetic storm, Van Allen belt, Lorenz force and related topics to do studies into sun physics and geo physics.
You will find and endless stream of articles on the interaction between the sun and earth, altering earth magnetic field.

Then, while you are looking into this, please reflect on the question whether or not the magnetic needle measures these changes and if we should then alter the original Ba Gua to local climatic conditions or for once and for all understand that we should accept that both Northern and Southern hemisphere should measure earth magnetic field in order to arrive to a Feng Shui Flying Star chart.

Local realities i.e. differences in climate, season and weather do not change this basic observation of earth magnetic field and it is this magnetic field that we measure in Feng Shui.

Later ‘Fire’ became associated also with the sun, but this is just one of the attributes.

It is easy to see that we should not alter the original principles the Luo Shu was based on, but we may have to adjust the Ba Gua to fit local conditions.
We want to observe local conditions like strength of the elements, temperature, season and weather.

The Luo Shu was not based on the waxing and waning of seasons, for simple reason that we would in that case not be able to apply Feng Shui for any region outside the temperate zones where we see distinct seasons as opposed to the tropical regions where we know only two seasons, the wet season and the dry season.

For both Northern and Southern hemisphere, any western type compass can be used.
When we refer to North in Feng Shui, we refer to magnetic North.
It is therefore not necessary to flip directions around for the Southern hemisphere.

It is incorrect to assume that Feng Shui directions refer to the equator, i.e. to alter the Southern Ba Gua to resemble the sun in the North.

Another strong argument used by the Southern school, and to be dismissed here, is the Corealis effect of water running down a sink clockwise on one hemisphere, water running anticlockwise on another hemisphere.

The Corealis effect is not related to Earth magnetic field, as it is a weather occurrence.
The compass needle used in Feng Shui to build house charts, will definitely not measure the weather. Moreover, how water runs down a sink is heavily dependent on the moon phases.