Book 69 - Household Feng-Shui

Page 79 in my book Ti Ling Hsien Tsung [Earth Magic and Spirit] begins the chapter "The Placement of Beds" where I recorded Taoist Master Ch'ing Chen's following instructions:

Avoid having a strong beam pressing down on the bed.
Be able to see the door when lying in bed.
Avoid having the bed directly facing the door.

In this chapter, I shall explain these rules in detail.

1. Avoid having a strong beam pressing down on the bed.
   Above the bed, there should not be any steel reinforced concrete beams, transverse or parallel. Wooden beams are not good either. Pipes for air conditioning or heating should also be avoided. It is also not good to have beds under staircases. In brief, it is best not to have anything directly above the bed. Deliberately installing canopy-type decorations above one's bed invites trouble. Once the feeling of oppression is generated, ill influences result.

2. Be able to see the door when lying in bed.
   When we are lying in bed, we must be able to see the bedroom door. The bed is in a correct orientation when we are able to see the door without straining or contorting. Some people place the head of the bed against the wall that has the door, and when they sleep, they face away from the door. This is an incorrect orientation. Sleeping with one's back to the door has ill effects on one's health.

3. Avoid having the bed directly facing the door.
   When a bed faces the door, chi entering the room rushes straight toward the bed. The best position for the head of a bed is the corner diagonal from the door. It is ominous to place a bed directly facing the door. When chi first enters a room, it has not yet settled down and such strong chi can be harmful.

I would like to add a few more points. Firstly, do not arbitrarily install skylights in the ceiling above the bed. Secondly, the head of the bed must rest against a solid wall. The wall against which the bed leans should not have a window directly above the head of the bed. To rest against a solid wall is to have support. Sleeping in a bed directly under a window may have ill influences on one's health and wealth

.

I once performed a feng-shui reading for a household whose family members all slept in beds placed in the center of their rooms. This kind of placement is inappropriate. Without walls for support, one feels "insubstantial," as if one is "floating in the air." Such bed placement will in fact lead a person's career to become ungrounded and "insubstantial."

Is it also necessary to orient the bed according to one's magnetic birth orientation (based on the twelve Earth Branches directions)? I have already addressed this in the book Ti Ling Hsien Tsung. The ideal situation is for the main door of one's home to be in an orientation compatible with the magnetic birth orientation of the owner and for the bed to also be oriented appropriately following the twelve Earth Branches directions. However, due to the constraints in the rules for positioning a bed it is often impossible to orient the bed according to the twelve Earth Branches directions. Therefore, in this situation, I feel that one does not have to adhere rigidly to these particular positioning rules. There are many other reasons as well.

I previously stated the following: "Some geomancers believe they must take the magnetic birth orientation into account in positioning the bed. The result is an awkward looking, ill-placed bed with unusable working space. It is irrational to sleep in such a bed. A bed positioned so that its four sides are facing corners may even invite noxious chi, grave injuries, and possible death. It is therefore erroneous to claim that one must always orient the bed according to one's magnetic birth orientation."

I have, for example, seen quite a few unusual bedrooms:

1. One had mirrors installed all around, above, and below the bed. The room felt like an illusory dreamland of mirrors.

2. In another, the headboard of the bed was a dragon sculpture that spewed water.

3. Installed on all sides of another bed were heads of animals such as tigers, leopards, lions, and elephants. Sleeping in such a bed must make one feel like the king of beasts!

4. I once saw a heart-shaped bed, whose owner treasured love above all else.

5. Another individual had a round bed, placed in the center of the bedroom.

6. One bed had a mechanism installed so it would rock up and down and rotate in both directions.

Unfortunately, all the rich men sleeping in these bedrooms subsequently met their decline. These strange beds were not in accordance with the teachings of feng-shui and symbolized degeneration.

I had heard that some of those beds were actually designed by geomancers to satisfy the psychological needs of their wealthy clients. Yet "too many mirrors" lead to a loss of inspiration. "Water at the head of a bed" indicates entanglements and difficulties. A "bed of animals" causes fatigue in both body and mind. A "heart-shaped bed" can lead to pessimism. "Round beds" make one unfavorable among one's circle of friends. And a "mechanical bed" causes endless disputes. These are the feng-shui implications of the above designs. Such beds may have appealed to the vanities of the wealthy, but the losses incurred were not worth the trouble.

A bed may be comfortable and the room's decorations elegant, yet one should always take feng-shui into consideration. Do not deliberately create strange and unnatural effects. These will lead to sluggishness and confusion as well as the loss of inspiration for work and the diminishing of willpower. One will then become listless, idle, and decadent.

Such are the drawbacks of bedrooms that are too luxurious. Without proper suppression of self-indulgence, endless greed and desire arise.

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