Field Guide · Earth + Water
The how-to of wind and water — direction, element, entrance, and the clearing of stagnant qi.
Feng shui — “wind and water” — is a practice, not a doctrine: you walk the site, read where the wind comes from and where the water goes, and place things to work with them. The old texts — the Zang Shu (Book of Burial) and the classical siting tradition — put it in one sentence: back to shelter, open to the water. Everything below is that sentence, practiced.
Walk the site at different hours, and answer four questions: where does the cold wind come from, where does the sun land, where does the water drain, where is the shelter? The classical rule is north solid, south open — a hill, tree line, or windbreak behind (the back), and an open face toward the sun and water (the front). The practice is the walk; the answers decide where the shelter goes, where the beds go, where the door faces. The same reading the micro-structure guide does, named as the old siting science.
The tradition assigns each direction an element: East is Wood, South is Fire, Center is Earth, West is Metal, North is Water. Placement practice: put things where their element belongs. The tools and the cutting — Metal’s work — belong in the West; the water and the barrel belong in the North; new plantings and young growth in the East; the hearth and the heat in the South; the still center — the worktable, the quiet place — in the Center. This is the same map as the Wu Xing tool matrix, laid on the ground instead of the bench.
Qi enters where people enter. The entrance wants to be clear, dry, and unblocked — a blocked door is a blocked arrival. The paths want to curve: a straight line aimed at the door is the sha arrow — energy arriving too fast and hitting like a blade. The practice is to walk the entrance as qi would walk it: from the gate to the door, and clear whatever the eye would trip on. A curved path slows the arrival; a clear door welcomes it.
Water belongs in front of the dwelling — the “bright hall” — moving gently, never pooling behind it. The rain barrel is feng shui practice by this rule: water caught in front of the place it serves, held still, released deliberately. The barrel build is the method; the placement is the practice.
Stagnant qi is dampness: the pile that sits, the corner that gathers, the shelf that holds what ended. The clearing practice is the physical act of transforming dampness — what is stuck gets moved, dried, released — the same discipline as the Metal phase and the same reading the tradition gives the modern complaint of heat and damp. Clarity in the space is clarity in the body: both are the same qi, unblocked.
The practice is daily, not decorative: the walk around the site, the clear door, the thing placed where its element belongs, the stuck thing released. See the Wind and Water overview for the principles behind these methods.