Geomaney Maurice Freedman Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1968. (1968), pp. 5-15. ble URL: bittp://links jstor.org/sici?sici=0080-4169% 281968429034 1968%3C5%3AG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is currently published by Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of htp:/wwww stor org/about/terms.html. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contaet the publisher regarding any further use ofthis work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hutp:/ www jstor.org/journalsraihum Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR isan independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupslwwwjstor.ore/ Fri Nov 3 12:40:38 2006GEOMANCY Presidential Address 1968 Maurice FREEDMAN London School of Economics and Political Science ‘Tus address is about what we might go so far as to call mystical ecology. I'am going to speak on the ritual aspect of the interaction between men and their physical environment, and I introduce my theme by quoting, not, as you might expect, from the Chinese evidence (there will be enough—perhaps too much— of that later),t but from an English masterpiece on occult practices. In act one, scene three of The alchemist, Abel Drugger the tobacco-man comes to consult Subtle, and, on being asked his business, replies: Tam a young beginner, and am building Of a new shop, an’t like your worship, iust, At comer of a street. (Here's the plot on't,) And I would know, by ar, sir, of your worship, Which way I should make my dore, by necromancie.. And, where my shelues. And, which should be for ‘boxes. And, which for pots. I would be glad to thriue, sir. ‘And, T was wish’d to your worship, by a gentleman, One Captaine Face, that say's you know mens planets, And their good angels, and their bad. Subtle furnishes the advice he is asked for. He says: Make me your dore, then, south; your broad side, west: And, on the east-side of your shop, aloft, Write Mathlai, Tarmiel, and Baraborat; Ypon the north-part, Rael, Velel, Thiel, ‘They are the names of those Mercurial spirits, ‘That doe fright fiyes from boxes... And Beneath your threshold, bury me a load-stone To draw in gallants, that weare spurres: The rest, They'll seeme to foliow . .. ‘And, on your stall, a puppet, with a vice, ‘And a court-fucus, to call city-dames. You shall deale much, with mineralls. ‘But Drugger has a further request: But, to looke ouer, si, my almanack, ‘And crosse out my ill-dayes, that I may neither Bargaine, nor trust vpon them.* Done into Chinese, and with just a little editing, these passages would make good sense to a Chinese audience—better sense than the original English makes tous. Chinese would recognise the féng-shud expert in Subtle, and commend the caution of the tradesman in ‘wanting to orient his shop and to conduct his business, on days favoured in the almanac: a ritual treatment of space and time. But let us leave Ben Jonson. Orientation is of the essence in féng-shul (Le. Chinese geomancy) but its more dramatic feature is its concern with the forms of the landscape and build- gs. Sir James Frazer’s lively scissors snipped out two examples from De Groot’s work to furnish Chinese illustrations of the magical maxim that like produces like. The first case deals with the city of ‘Ch'tian-chou which, shaped like a carp, was thought in ancient times to have fallen victim to a neighbouring town in the form of a fishing-net. The inhabitants of CCh'tian-chou saved themselves by putting up two tall pagodas to intercept the net. The other story is of Shanghai in the mid-nineteenth century, where a rebellion was attributed by geomancers to the in- auspicious nature of a temple shaped like a tortoise. ‘The name of the temple was changed and its two eyes were put out (that is, the wells that stood before the door were filed up).? ‘Asa final element in my introduction I shall cite the famous essay on primitive classification by Durkheim and Mauss—or should I say the essay made famous in this country by Dr Rodney Needham’s translation and critique (Durkheim & Mauss 1963)? The chapter written by Durkheim and Mauss on China, for all its poor scholarship and faults in reasoning, correctly sites geomancy within an enormous Chinese system of classificatory ideas and positional and temporal notions; and, by its determination to perceive a total system (even if in reality there is none such), balances the comical effect produced by the atomistic treatment of the subject found in The golden bough. My references to Frazer and to Durkheim and Mauss show that Chinese geomancy has a place in the classical literature of anthropology; yet the subject did not until recent years seem to interest the anthropolo- sists engaged in studies of China. ‘They could hardly fail to notice the relevance of féng-shui for the orienta~ tion and disposition of graves* (although some appear to have managed even this degree of indifference); but the topic was quickly passed over, never to lead on to aan enquiry into the significance of the roughly sketched in ideas about the need for tombs to be pointed in the right direction, There is, in fact, some lesson for the historian of our discipline inthis strange lacuna. The relevant facts, baldly stated, are as follows. In the nineteenth century, sinologues, missionaries, Western administrators and travellers found geomancy staring them in the face in China, and they published their impressions and researches. Frazer and Durkheim and Mauss drew on the writings of one such man, J.J. M, De Groot; there were many others. Now, to a large extent, these men of the last century were puton to geomancy by its emergence as a politcal force in the encounter between China and the West. The building of churches and European-style houses, the laying down of roads and railways, the digging of mines, and so on, were likely to be attended by Chinese protests that the féng-shui of villages, towns, or districts was being ruined. Sometimes the reactions blocked a proposed development; often they allowed projects to go forward in exchange for monetary com- pensation.* By the time the anthropologists came on stage these outbursts of resistance in geomancy had died down, and moreover, the Chinese imperial system had disappeared, For the new kind of scholar- investigator the geomancers they came across seemed to be linked merely or predominantly with the siting of tombs, and the study of this ritual activity appeared tangential to the task of exploring social institutions. (Of course, it is in the nature of things that there are more tombs than houses; that fact alone goes some of the way to accounting for the one-sided treatment of _feng-shui.) As for the literature of the nineteenth and carly twentieth centuries, it was left to doze on its shelves. But yet another kind of literature was overlooked. Some of the anthropologists were Chinese, yet they seem never to have bothered themselves with the hand~ books of geomancy current in China. Indeed, it can be said of this generation of Chinese anthropologists, as of many other kinds of Chinese intellectual of the period, that the most interesting aspects of Chinese religion and thought were closed off to them by their ‘own ideological resistance to ‘superstition’. Here is a version of their attitude in a book first published as recently as 1960 and intended to be a guide (published partly under the auspices of UNESCO) to Chinese tradition for Westerners. While educated Chinese [the guide asserts} have paid homage only to Heaven and their ancestors, and sometimes to Confucius, Buddha, Lao Tzu, and a few other historical personages, the common people have believed in the existence of thirty-three Buddhist Heavens, eighty-one Taoist Heavens, and eighteen Buddhist hells, and put faith in astrology, almanacs, dream interpretation, geomancy, witch- craft, phrenology, palmistry, the recalling of the soul, fortune telling in all forms, charms, magic, and many other varieties of superstition (a dismal lst!) (De Bary et al. 1964: 286). ‘Hows the poor Westerner to know that the Confucian elite were involved in many of these practices and shared in many of these “superstitions”? Formulations of this sort may prevent us from secing that geomancy (to stick to my subject) occupied a highly ambiguous status in the world of the educated. “It was not part of the state cult and yet it was used by the imperial government for the siting and protection of important tombs and buildings (ef. C. K. Yang, 1961: 263sqq.). Tt was often officially attacked for its harmful effects on public behaviour,” especially in regard to its tendency to delay burial, and yet féngeshul lawsuits ‘were entertained in the courts, and officialdom often responded to rebellion by smashing the ancestral tombs of the rebels.® As for the practitioners of feng- shui, the geomancers, we shall see little ater on that they were in one sense a part of the elite. De Groot, with a fine eye for the inconsistencies of Chinese attitudes, relates with great relish how anti-Buddhist dynasties in China made use of Buddhist monasteries for the effect they had on the féng-shui of their surroundings. He writes: As for a conclusive proof of the influence of the Fung-shui system on the establishment and the preservation of Buddhistic monasteries and pago- das—it is a well-known fact, that even all around the Imperial metropolis, in the plains and on the hills, a great number are found, erected for the insurance or the improvement of the Fung-shui of the palace, and consequently of the Imperial family and the whole empire. And who were the founders? none others than the emperors of the anti-buddhistic dynasties of Ming and Tsing; and who maintains ‘them? the sovereigns of the last-named house (De Groot 1963: 71; cf. Johnston 1913: 337 sqq.). T suggest that Chinese geomancy has come back {nto anthropological view for reasons that link up with what I have said about the past. In the first place, there isa political reason. Much of the recent anthro- ological research on Chinese society has been con- ducted in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, and there the massive economic development that has taken place since the early 1950's has led to the same kkind of disturbance of the rural landscape as stimu- lated the féng-shui protests of the last century. I shall hhave more to say on that subject. ‘The second reason lies partly in the general revival of anthropological interest in religion and ideas as systems, and partly in the fact that the most recent anthropological students ‘of Chinese life, not being Chinese themselves, have failed to be blinded by radical prejudices about super- stition. They have been able to search out and take the facts for what they are, being unfearful of the ‘grotesque irrationality they might uncover, having no stake in the maintenance of view of what Chinese society ought to be like. T want very briefly to sketch the evolution of my own interest in the subject. began by being fascinated by what I could find in De Groot and other older writers that bore on the féng-shui of graves as an aspect of competition among agnates and among rival lineages (Freedman 1958: 77sqq.). In 1963 I set out for a period of field work in Hong Kong with geo- mancy high on my list of problems. Therg I found myself in an atmosphere in which féng-shul was much talked of, since, apart from anything else,,it pre- occupied government officials who were faced by reactions to the disturbance of graves, the construction of roads, and the movement of villages. My earlier ‘one-sided interest was corrected, and I came away from Hong Kong not only with some information but, ‘more important, a budget of questions to pose to theolder literature. At this point I~was fortunate enough to find that one of my sinologically trained graduate students, Mr Stephan Feuchtwang, was eager to write a thesis on féng-shui, basing it for the greater part on the Chinese sources. I speak today from my brief experience in Hong Kong, from my knowledge of the literature, and from Mr Feuchtwang’s researches (Feuchtwang 1965) Since I have invoked his splendid study of the subject, I ought to make it clear that Mr Feuchtwang may very well not agree with all that I hhave to say today. ‘Writing on féng-shui in the last few years, T have confined myself for the most part to discussing the connexions between the geomancy of tombs and ancestor worship, arguing (to compress a series of points) that they together form a system in which fore- bears are on the one hand looked up to and worshipped and on the other looked down on and manipulated. In ancestor worship Chinese express solidarity with their agnates; in the féng-shui of graves they give rein to their impulses to assert their independence of, and competition with, the same agnates (cf. Freedman 1966: 118-43; 1967: 875qq.). In this address T want to shift the focus of interest towards graves and houses as members of a single class. The Chinese distinguish between the two forms of construction as yin buildings and yang buildings respectively, at one and the same time distinguishing them as dwellings of darkness and dwellings of light and linking them together in one system. For yin-yang is a system of complementary opposites, not (as was sometimes thought in the past) 4 dualism of mutually antagonistic forces. It is very important to grasp the idea that in the Chinese view a building is not simply something that sits upon the ground to serve as a convenient site for hhuman activity. It is an intervention in the universe; and that universe is composed of the physical environ- ment and men and the relationships among men, Men are bonded to the physical environment, working good or ill upon it and being done good or ill to by it. Moreover, when a man puts up a building he inserts something into the landscape and between him and his neighbours. It follows that risks attend his enterprise and he must take precautions. ‘The physical universe is alive with forces that, on the one side, can be shaped and brought fruitfully to bear on a dwelling and those who live init, and, on the other side, can by oversight ‘ormismanagement be made to react disastrously. But the very act of siting and constructing a house to one’s ‘own advantage may be to the detriment of others. Modifications in the landscape reverberate. So that, in principle, every act of construction disturbs a ‘complex balance of forces within a system made up of nature and society, and it must be made to produce a new balance of forces lest evil follow. Chinese are frightened by the act of building (ef. Ayscough 1925: 25; Hayes 1967: 22sqq.)—and they are wary, too, of the tricks that carpenters and masons can play on them (ef. Eberhard 1965: 7isqq.; 1966: 17sqq. et passim) For the sake of simplicity I have spoken as though wwe were concerned only with individual buildings. In fact, feng-shui is applicable to any unit of habitation, so that from the single house at one end of the scale to the society as a whole there is @ hierarchy of nesting units each with its féng-shui and subject also to the _féng-shui of all the higher units to which it belongs. ‘That is to say, localised lineages, villages, cities, districts and provinces have each their geomancy; it may derive from the chief place (for example, the capital of an administrative unit) or the chief building (for example, the ancestral hall of a localised lineage) of the unit in question. Between co-ordinate units— between houses in one village, between villages, ‘between towns, and so on—there may be rivalry issuing in geomantic quarrels, one side accusing the other of harming its féng-shul and taking counter- ‘measures, as in the case cited by Frazer: you will remember that the city of Ch'tlan-chou erected two pagodas to foil its net-like neighbour. But geomancy ‘may also be involved in the relations between entities at different levels of the hierarchy, such that a capital city may harm one of the nearby villages in its jurisdiction. Let me cite some examples. Here, to begin with, is avery simple one to reinforce Frazer’s illustration of the significance of resemblances. Perhaps I should add that part of the interest of this case is that it originally appeared in a Hong Kong Chinese news- paper towards the end of the last century in response toa questionnaire sent out by the Folk-Lore Society, London. In... . the district of Shuntak, Kwangtung Prov- ince, there is a monumental gateway in an un- inhabited part of the country which is said to resemble in shape a rat-trap. It is related that the ‘rops in the neighbourhood having failed for several seasons in succession, the aid of the geomancers was invoked in order to discover the reason. After care- fully considering the surroundings of the place, they found that the hills opposite to where the crops were grown presented the appearance of a rat. This rat, they said, devoured the crops, so they advised the construction of a rat-trap to prevent its depreda- tions. No sooner was the rat-trap erected than the crop yielded grain in abundance (Lockhart 189 361). To put such a case into perspective, we need to know that in modern times the dominant school of féng-siui (the so-called School of Forms, or Kiangsi School), while continuing to use the compass as a method of analysing a landscape (of which more in a moment) hhas placed greater reliance on detecting conformations” that can be identified as creatures or objects. Dragons, which are themselves the outward expression of the favourable mystical forces animating a landscape, are commonly and readily detectable—as I can testify to from my own experience after [had come to assimilate my perception of the countryside to that of the Chinese among whom I lived. By their eloquent anddevious sinuosity dragons are apparent wherever rise in the ground offers the imagination some purchase. Dragons apart, the shape of the landscape may suggest a great number of things and beings; some of them are the geomancer’s standard symbols (as, for ‘example, a writing-brush rest, which promises success in scholarship); others proliferate from the trained fancy of ordinary minds. In relation to either build- ings or graves, what is read into the landscape presages {good or ill fortune. I remember the ambiguous awe with which I was introduced to a grave said to be nestling comfortably between the raised thighs of a naked woman, (It took me a little while to be convinced.) ‘An alteration made or developing by itself in the landscape may well damage, but sometimes improve, the entities it embodies. ‘The sinking of a well or the cutting of a road is likely to sever a dragon's artery o sinew (to take the commonest case) and release some terrible power of misfortune to issue in poverty, disease, orchildlessness. A road made to lead straight to my door is an arrow against witich I shall be able to protect myself only with difficulty, and perhaps at great expense. On the other hand, the good and bad forces in the landscape are by no means all represented in things and creatures; some are invisible, and yet may be concentrated upon or deflected by man-made devices: pools of water, stands of tres, buildings, and so on. For one building to rise above another or block its access to the féng-shui ofits site is an infringe- ment of a sort of geomantic ancient lights; and quarrels will ensue. ‘The pagodas that have entered the Western spirit as pleasing (I had almost said quaint) monuments of Chinese taste, are closely associated with attempts to procure a favourable féng-shui; and they illustrate two different mystical functions of mi made structures: they may be put up to remedy a geomantic defect in the landscape or to act as a symbol of some desirable feature or quality. In Chrtlan-chou they are supposed to have warded off the net. Pagodas shaped like writing-brushes promise ‘examination successes. The great pagoda of An-ching, the port in Anhwei Province, is said to function as a ‘mast for the port, which is said to resemble a junk. Two enormous anchors hang on the pagoda’s walls, “their original purpose having been to prevent the city drifting away downstream’ (Willetts 1965: 398). We are in a world of concrete poetry. T draw my next example from an account in the 1870's of atypical kind of problem faced by foreigners in China, The story goes that some German mission- aries in Kwangtung, in order to protect their school- house from visits from thieves, added two watch- towers, a few feet high, to the ends of the building. Alas for them, one of the towers was just visible from ‘a grave a quarter of a mile off. "The enraged descendants of the occupant of that tomb gathered the village together against the missionaries and threatened to burn down their establishment. In vain did the missionaries argue that so small a portion of their building could be seen from the tomb, that if, as was most reasonable, cone supposed that the deceased spirit preferred to ssit upon his semi-circular armchair-like grave, instead of fatiguing himself by standing upon it, he then would not have the obnoxious projection within the field of vision at all. No matter, the offensive towers must be pulled down. As usual in China, it was found that even Feng-Shui could be propitiated by a gift; and the missionaries bought toleration of the disturbed spirit for a certain number of dollars, paid down to his representatives in the flesh (Turner 1874: 341). There are two essential points to note in this jocularly told story. The first is that the féng-shui of a grave, and therefore the good fortune of the agnatic descendants of its occupant, could be said to be put at risk by a significant alteration in the landscape. The second point is that the villagers were seizing upon an ‘opportunity to express their defiance of the mission- aries. ‘They were paid off, as villagers are being paid ‘off to this day in similar circumstances in Hong Kong by the government and others. The annual accounts of the New Territories Administration in that colony show sums of money handed out as compensation payments relating to public works, two categories of the accounts being headed “Ex Gratia & Disturbance Allowance’ and ‘Graves & Other Compensation’. ‘Some of these disbursements must certainly be con- nected with the damage done to féng-shui, and there can be no doubt about what lies behind the items labelled ‘tun fu’, for they are rites (in these cases paid for by the government) for restoring peace, harmony, and luck to sites whose féng-shui has been disturbed.1° ‘Now, the Hong Kong situation is an artificial one, in the sense that the government, not being Chinese, contends with the people on unequal terms. The people believe in féng-shu; the government does not, bbut thinks itself under an obligation to respect the religious beliefs and practices of those it governs. (U think, by the way, that in the early part of this century a tougher attitude was taken up to popular resistance by geomancy; since the second world war the characteristic British colonial tolerance of exotic religions has been reinforced by the needs ofa delicate political situation.) Were the government of Hong Kong to share the belies of the people it would be in 4 position to resist their consequences, for its officials would then be able to match their own feng-shul opinions against those of the objectors and, if neces- sary, call in professional geomancers to argue with those retained by the people. There has, in fact, been ‘telling incident in the New Territories that’ rams hhome my point. At one time in the fifties therewas a Chinese District Officer (by a coincidence he was the first pupil I ever taught at the London School of Economics) who, when confronted by an irritating feng-shui case, took himself off to the library of Hong ‘Kong University to read the subject up out of the Chinese handbooks. He then felt himself able tocontradict and confound the geomancer retained by the complainants. ‘The geomancer was floored and his clients withdrew in awe. In China itself a man- arin might well consult a geomancer in connexion with the siting of a new building or well, bearing the interests and peace of his country in mind; but the people would never have been in a position to harass him with complaints about the geomantic effects of ‘government action if he chose to talk back in their ‘own language. ‘My last example comes from a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with my friend Mr Teh Cheang Wan, the chief architect ofthe Singapore Housing and Development Board. He told me that in some of the Singapore housing estates the officials have had to deal with complaints arising from the fact that the main doors of pairs of flats directly face each other. One nervous householder puts up a charm over his door to ‘ward off the evil shooting out ofthe flat that confronts, him, and the occupant of the later lat then complains to the authorities that he is under attack by, sto say, reflection. I gather that, as a result, the plans of future blocks of flats are to be altered to prevent front doors facing one another. This simple piece of information illustrates, frst, the survival of geomantic ideas in a ‘modem city, and second, the Chinese fear of being deprived of one's fair share of good fortune, That fortune is a quantum; my neighbour's increment is my decrement. As a keen observer of nineteenth-century China pointed out, it was a common custom when a house was being built to hang up lanterns and beat gongs to attract luck. In self-defence the neighbours had then to do the same in order to prevent their luck being drawn away (Nevius 1869; 176). ‘The geomancer has appeared in several contexts in ‘my account, and it is now necessary to speak about hhim in some detail. I shall begin with his skill and then deal with the question of his status. The best introduction to both matters is a sketch of the characteristic geomancer as he emerges from the nineteenth-century accounts and as, in some measure, he can still be seen today in Hong Kong. He stoops in a scholarly fashion, is long-gowned, and has large ‘glasses perched upon his nose. He is borne to his work in a sedan chair, and in general affects the manner of a gentleman of leisure. In his hands he cearries a compass and books; among the latter there may be a copy of the Classic of Changes (I Ching) and an almanac, as well as professional manuals (cf. Hubrig 1879: 35). ‘The magnetic compass is the geomancer’s instru- ment par excellence. It always appears in professional geomancy, although its role there depends on whether we are dealing with the so-called Kiangsi School, in which the forms of the landscape are all-important, or the Fukien School, in which the compass dominates (cf: Needham 1962: 242). Yet, whichever the School, the compass serves as a sort of model of the universe, by means of which the features of heaven and earth can be brought into relation with a given site to analyse its potential over time and to predict of it what it will bring of good and bad. ‘The floating needle of the compass stands at the centre of a series of concentric rings of characters, such that a line drawn from the centre provides a radius of characters to be read and interpreted together. The Chinese magnetic compass seems to have been invented as an instrument of divination (Needham 1962: 230, 293sqq.) and, while assuming more scientific and practical functions, has remained part of the equipment of divination to this aay. ‘Among the books he carries the geomancer uses the ‘manuals for interpreting earthly shapes and currents and the almanac for calendrie and astrological data: the divining process rests on the two axes of space and time, The third book, the Classic of Changes, is a link between féng-shui and all that is most respectable in Chinese thought. That ancient book of divination (in which the units are sixty-four hexagrams) has pro- vided generation after generation of Chinese scholars and gentlemen with a basis—one can hardly say raw rmaterial—for moral and metaphysical speculation, as well as a means of deciding on a line of conduct within the framework of conditions ruling at a given time. It is the bridge between canonic metaphysics and divination, on the one hand, and the popular system of féng-shui, on the other. Dressed in his long gown, spectacles rounding his eyes to impressive proportions, the geomancer is the scholar brought down into ordinary life, the one member—or pseudo-member—of the educated elite whose company and paid services are available to the common run of men. Whence his grand airs and literary pretensions. The basic metaphysic on which he works—a universe pulsing between yin and yang, permeated by cf (matter-energy), moved back and forth by the Five Agents of Water, Fire, Wood, Metal, and Earth—is the metaphysie of scholardom, the joint intellectual property of the Confucian literati. But the geomancer puts his metaphysic to common use. He mediates, then, between the two main strata of Chinese society, the learned (and therefore the bureaucratic) and the common; and occupies a status Which is, in consequence, both hampered and advan- taged by ambiguity. The true scholar, for whom the ideal is government service, may well oin in respectable divining exercises with his intimates (consulting the 1 Ching, conducting sand-tray séances, the reading of faces, and so on), but he will not put his talents upon the open market. It follows that the geomancer is not uite the thing: he is a kind of gentleman and yet not ‘entirely s0; having a valence for both the literati and the common people (he serves both), he cannot clearly belong to either. From the point of view of the elite he is tainted by his attachment to the popular and the extra-bureaucratic; that same attachment, doubled by his airs and graces, is his strength with the common people. Alas, the sources are too vague for us to say exactly how the ranks of the geomancers were filled, but we may well suspect that the typical geomancer‘was either a failure of the imperial examination system (as was often the doctor, the schoolmaster, and the seribe) or the product ofa literate family not yet ripe forthe standing of the elite." In contemporary Hong Kong, mutatis mutandis, we can find examples of both Kinds. That is the ideal type of geomancer. He stands contrasted with another such: the priest, the manipu- lator of the supernatural, the performer of rites. The ‘geomancer need by no means confine himself to fEng- ‘Shui; he may read fortunes and cast horoscopes in the ‘market place, if he is forced to it by poverty, and yet not lose his special character by that humble activity. But to stay geomancer pur sang, he must not cross the line into the performance of rites or be party to the invocation of gods and spirits, for that is the terrain of the priest, a man who, mediating between humans and the supernatural, is unambiguously ofthe common people (except in the special case of certain Buddhists and Taoists) @ low servant standing outside and at a sreat distance from the Confucian elite. ‘And yet in real life (as we can see from the literature and Ihave noted in Hong Kong today) geomancer and priest sometimes coincide in one man, in the sense that ‘an expert who chooses and orients a site for a grave or hhouse may also exorcise evil from the place and con- duct prayers and offerings to the gods; whereas ideally the two groups of function should be kept clearly distinct. Doubtless, this merging of roles occurs most frequently in poor and isolated communities where the services ofa ‘pure’ eomancer are hard to come by and expensive.!? But there is more than a mere socio- logical interest in the division between, and the occasional merging of, the two persons: there is a gulf in metaphysics between them, in that one deals in dis- embodied forces, beinga kind of technical practitioner, and the other in anthropomorphous spirits. True, the geomancer of the School of Forms may point to ‘beings in the landscape, but they are signs, not objects ‘of worship. If they are to be treated as entities and not forces, then the geomancer (ideally) hands over to the priest; itis the latter who must conduct the rites and propitiate the offended spirit. T referred earlier on to the tun fu often paid for out of Hong Kong. government fuinds to negate the consequences of a damaged féng-shui; they are rites to be eartied out by priests. ‘Yet from another point of view this metaphysical gulf between geomancer and priest is no gulf at all, but rather a neat transformation, Most of the elements of féng-shui can be restated in the language of ordinary religion. Just as in Neo-Confucian philo- sophical writings the concretising words shén and kuei (which are ordinarily translatable as gods and Gemons, respectively) are used for positive and negative spiritual forces, being tripped of their anthro- pomorphic connotations (ef. Chan 1967: 32, 366), s0 in popular religion a reverse transformation is worked by which the disembodied forces ofthe geomancer are tumed into personal entities. For the expert in féng- 10 shui a wall may need to be put up to shield a doorway from, and deflect, a baneful mystical force that, shoot- ig straight up a road to the house, may bring its cecupants to ruin; in religion that force becomes a demon to be baffled by the obstructing wall. For the ‘geomancer the landscape is full of the signs of forces; for the priest it is inhabited by gods and spirits. The geomancer stands outside the ordinary religious system, being counterposed to the priest. He looks like an observer of nature and he appeals to an orthodox Confucian metaphysic. And yet the fruits ‘of his analysis and reasoning are expressible in popular religion, Is the geomancer in religion or out of it? ‘The question may strike you as rather silly, but in fact it leads on to two interesting matters. ‘The first matter wwe have already touched on: the standing of geomancy. Its respectable by virtue of its connexion with respect able (ie. orthodox) literacy, and in this fashion it ordinarily exempt from the description ‘superstitious’ in the eyes of respectable Chinese. For them there is something called religion, a debased and sometimes dirty thing, and there is féng-shui which rests on a kind of science of observation, backed up by @ canonic literature and that impressive instrument, the compass. If they are misled by the geomancer, they are dazzled by science, not bamboozled by religion. Atheists or Christians (to turn to the modern context in Hong Kong), they see no contradiction in believing in, and having recourse to geomancy. It is eminently reasonable—and of course it often works. The second matter is one for us, the outside observers. Nearly a hundred years ago Eitel (1873) called his monograph Feng-shui: or, The rudiments of natural science in China, and in our own day Dr Joseph Needham has written about geomancy in the context of the development of Chinese science. He calls ita pesudo-science, a description clearly intended as a kind of compliment, and sees in it, as in many other Chinese magical and divinatory practices, the seeds of a more rational endeavour. Some of these magical practices, he writes, ‘led insensibly to import- ant discoveries in the practical investigation of natural phenomena, Since magic and science both involve positive manual operations, the empirical element was never missing from Chinese “‘proto-science” * (Need- ham 1956: 346). No doubt, just as in the history of alchemy andchemistry andof astrology andastronomy, there is some significant developmental connexion between jéng-shui and the Chinese understanding of the nature of the earth. (The term til, another name for féng-shui, in modern times means geosraphy.) But think it is forcing the evidence to assert any'stronger link between féng-shui and science. Chinese geomancy is a technique of divination; it states no unambiguous propositions; it foresees no rational comparison or experiment. For us it must be part of Chinese religion—when we take that word in its broadest sense—even though, from the point of view of the ‘Chinese themselves, itis differentiated from what they think of as their religion,