Reading the Dragon

In reading a mountain range, feng shui first tells a living range from a dead one: a range that is tall, lush and unbroken is alive, and one that is bare and crumbling is dead. Once a good incoming dragon is found, the compass shows which of the 24 mountains it falls on, and so whether it is a yang dragon or a yin dragon. A yang dragon takes a yang facing and a yin dragon a yin facing, so once the incoming dragon is known, the facing is fixed.

Living ranges and the pass between two mountains

A range that is grand and tall, green and lush, and full of living energy, that leaves a person refreshed, clear-headed and lifted in spirit, and that runs on without a break, is a living range: a range that welcomes and embraces the site. When the ridgeline runs unbroken all the way down from the peak where the range begins to the lower peak where it rises again and runs on, the force of such a dragon vein lasts long.

Follow the dragon vein in the direction it runs. Where the range passes between two large mountains, its ridgeline held between them, it runs through a narrow pass. Such a pass shows that a lair lies ahead. This is how a range is traced along its course to the place where it forms a lair.

Where the dragon forms its lair

Where the dragon vein enters the ground of its lair, that ground is sometimes a mountain hollow and sometimes a plain. A large incoming dragon always forms a large lair, and the bright hall in front of the lair can stretch for a hundred miles or more. The whole Taipei Basin is the bright hall of an incoming dragon from the Central Mountain Range; the dragon’s force is great, and the hall can hold a large city of a million people.

A small incoming dragon forms a small lair with a small bright hall. A small lair can take a house site, for a home, or a grave site, for a tomb.

Put plainly, tracing a range to its lair is how people in ancient times found a place to settle: somewhere fit to live in and raise descendants, with little illness, plentiful produce and the fewest natural disasters.

Dead and hostile ranges

A mountain range that is bare of trees and collapsing everywhere, with rocks tumbling down, is dead. When feng shui masters say that a bare, crumbling mountain takes no grave, a dead range is what they mean.

A range that is thin and bony, not full, lacks energy and is not a favorable range either.

A range covered all over in gravel and sand is worse still: it is hostile, a place where sand blows and stones roll. Such ground grows nothing. It is a place where the family line dies out and the livestock die.

Yang dragons and yin dragons

Once a good dragon vein and its lair are found, the compass is taken out and the range is read along its ridgeline to see which dragon it is. Feng shui divides dragons into two kinds, yang dragons and yin dragons, set by the pairing of stems with trigrams in the Earlier Heaven arrangement. On the compass of the Three Harmony school, the Three Harmony compass, the fourth ring is the 24 mountains.

On the Three Harmony compass, twelve sitting mountains are written in red: these are the yang dragons. Twelve are written in gold: these are the yin dragons. The table gives yin or yang for each of the 24 mountains; the Note column marks the mountains the book singles out, explained below.

Setting the facing

Feng shui masters give the facing great weight and set it by the incoming dragon. For a house site and a grave site alike, a yang dragon must take a yang facing and a yin dragon a yin facing; the two are never mixed. As the saying goes:

阴阳相见，福禄永贞；阴阳相乘，祸咎灭门

Our translation: When yin and yang meet in kind, fortune and rank endure forever; when yin and yang are crossed, calamity wipes out the whole family.

Within yin and yang there is a further distinction: a yang dragon brings no eminence, and a yin dragon brings great eminence.

One school of feng shui masters takes the compass reading at the narrow pass between two mountains to fix which of the 24 mountains the incoming dragon is.

The most favorable and most refined mountains

A yin dragon of majestic force that comes from one of the three most favorable or the six most refined mountains always makes a site of great eminence.

The three most favorable: the three yin dragons on Thunder, Yang Metal and Pig.

The six most refined: the six yin dragons on Mountain, Yang Fire, Wind, Yin Metal, Lake and Yin Fire.

Thunder and Lake are trigram names. On the 24 mountains, Thunder falls on Rabbit and Lake on Rooster.

Mountains matched to the noblest stars

The ancients also matched the stars of heaven to the 24 sitting mountains, in the sense of the saying that heaven’s light shines down and earth’s virtue bears it up. The Book of Changes says the same: heaven shows its signs in the stars and reveals good and ill; in heaven they become images, and on earth they take form. Each of the 24 mountains has its star. The book names only four of them, the four mountains matched to the noblest stars: Pig, Mountain, Wind and Lake.

These four stars are the noblest. The stars of Pig, Mountain and Wind are the emperor’s seats among the stars; Lake’s is the fourth. So feng shui masters have always held that wherever a capital stands, it is certain to be a fine layout if these three come together. That is, the three incoming dragons that meet are exactly the yin dragons of Pig, Mountain and Wind; three straight lines drawn from them run across the bright hall, and the point where they cross is where the capital stands.

So the study of feng shui can read, at its largest, the fortunes of a nation and, at its smallest, the fortunes of a family, since a nation is built up family by family.

Source: The Way of the Earth's Veins (天纪：地脉道)