The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth. —Edith Sitwell

Dazzle with Brilliance or Baffle with ...

You should carry your intellect the way James Dean carried a cigarette.
— Penn Jillette

Feng Shui and the Tango in 12 Easy Lessons by the DeAmicis duo contains a variety of odd theories in which the authors take great pride. However, facts fail to agree with their theories.

"Facts don't agree?" you can imagine the authors saying, shrugging their shoulders. "Then, so much the worse for the facts."

The book is nothing more than another heavy-handed sales pitch that supports faulty conclusions.

This analysis covers only a few of the many egregious errors in this book; it would go on for pages, but you'll get the idea from these samples.

What They Say	Reality Check
" [Feng Shui] is a deep field with an ancient history rooted in the mystery traditions of many cultures. "(Note) Or maybe the term is "modern mystical schools" to reflect learning that came from China during the Cultural Revolution. (page 189)	Sounds reasonable enough, until you reach "mystery traditions." This term appears regularly in the book but there's no definition. That's because a definition would deprive them of wiggle room — and they definitely need plenty. Turn to any unabridged dictionary, look up mystery, and you ask: do the DeAmicis mean "mystery traditions" as a religious truth that one can know only by revelation and cannot fully understand? Yet daily people learn how to use a compass (Luopan) and master the calculations; it's knowledge imparted by teachers, not by mystical revelation. Does their meaning of "mystery traditions" refer to any of the 15 events (as the Nativity, the Crucifixion, or the Assumption) serving as a subject for meditation during the saying of the rosary? After all, "mystery plays" with these very religious themes constitute a "mystery tradition." Or perhaps they're using "mystery traditions" to mean a secret religious rite believed (as in Eleusinian and Mithraic cults) to impart enduring bliss to an initiate? Could "mystery traditions" mean the specialized practices or ritual peculiar to an occupation (as in the craft techniques of medieval guilds, which were called mysteries)? I assume they use "mystery traditions" in the sense of one of the minor meanings of the word: a work of fiction. Feng shui, like astronomy, was considered proprietary information of the Chinese government. Proprietary government information — like the list of corporations that crafted the energy policies of the Bush administration — is hardly a religious viewpoint or a mystical revelation. To quote Arthur C. Clarke, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Profiles of the Future, 1961) As Ole Bruun documents in Fengshui in China, no "modern mystery schools" (or "old mystery schools" for that matter) left China during the Cultural Revolution. A few people with feng shui knowledge were able to escape the turmoil, but most could not, and some simply would not leave — and most who stayed behind paid a terrible price.
feng shui is known by many names around the world; any culture not using it fails to prosper or possibly survive (page 6)	Feng shui is an ethnoscience that began in China. Documentary evidence and archeological remains prove that the history of feng shui spans several thousand years (the earliest writings related to feng shui are dated to the Shang era and appear on jiaguwen or oracle bones). Archeologically its use can be implied more than 2,000 years earlier than its first written mention. Feng shui works only for settled cultures. It has similar names throughout Asia in the cultures that adapted it for their use (Vietnam, Korea, and Japan, for example). No cultures outside those influenced by the original Chinese science have been documented as having and using feng shui or anything remotely similar. Cultures outside the range of influence of the science cannot provide evidence of any connection. Vastu Shastra, although younger than feng shui by a few thousand years, is entirely an Indian creation. It is noticeably different from feng shui. Cultures and empires wax and wane, just like yin and yang (for a modern view of this cycle see Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers). China is the one human culture that has withstood the ravages of time — and even it has experienced its waxing and waning. To say that cultures either "use it or lose it" when it comes to feng shui is ridiculous. The majority of cultures at any time in history did not know anything about feng shui. In more recent times, powerful cultures (Europe and the US in the 19th and most of the 20th century) knew about it and largely shunned it. The authors reject traditional feng shu and ignore the opportunity to use their bald assertions to uphold principles of authentic practice. They would rather invent inferior products, embrace questionable ideas and practices, and attempt to pass unsavory and outdated Western ideas as the wisdom of the East. If we took the DeAmicis' statement at face value, and we know anything about the history of the world, we'd have to say that it's obvious feng shui is native to China because it's the only culture still thriving relatively intact thousands of years after its beginnings.
"...the role our bodies play as vehicles for our spirit." (page 6) "...secret language that your body speaks to your environment in [sic]..." (page 10) "Our bodies are much more in touch with our feelings than our minds." (page 11) "Your animal body doesn't care about...your conscious mind." (Page 12) "Your mind will lie to you....but your body won't." (Page 12) "The body's design is much older than the logical mind, and its criteria are much simpler." (page 107) "When your conscious, logical mind overrides...the sequential part of intellect..." (page 177) We are affected by our lives and "react to things we don't consciously see, based upon [our body's] ancient programming" (page 190) "survival systems" in the subconscious "override the conscious mind" (page 190)	The DeAmicis' thinking is infected with the Cartesian cut, a Western dualistic worldview. Daniel Dennett wrote ;...our 'intuitive' ways of thinking about consciousness are infected with leftover Cartesian images, an underestimated legacy of the dualist past. Thanks to cognitive neuroscience, consciousness studies, efforts in AI, and the works of outstanding scientists like Maturana and Varela, Antonio Damasio, Candace Pert, and researchers in the field of psychoneuroimmunology, we know how much of Descartes' thinking was built on the folk wisdom of his day (he was born in 1596 and died in 1650). And most of that folk wisdom was Platonic philosophy, picked up again by Romantics and spiritualist movements. Plato taught that humans must live in their mind because that's where the true life is. The human body, he said, is "common with that of brute beasts." The DeAmicis substitute animal body for "brute beasts" but otherwise the philosophy is unchanged. Basing a feng shui book on hoary Western philosophy is fairly typical in New Age circles (New-Agers are an extremely conservative and reactionary crowd, no matter what their marketing says). What's intriguing is the DeAmicis' dogged insistence on the relevance of outmoded Western duality to a science from a culture that never conceived the world as a duality. Your mind is part of your body As Antonio Damasio explains, Within our brain, we have a virtual body. This is proven by studies on people who can sense limbs that have been amputated, and on people undergoing brain surgery. He adds Emotions are collections of chemical and neural responses, forming a pattern." In this line of reasoning you can find evidence of emotion in a fruit fly Your mind is as animal as your body Like it or not, 98 percent of chimpanzee genes are identical to humans'. Only people uncomfortable with the fact that our close relatives are apes have difficulty acknowledging our complete animality. Studies on culture in bees, parrots, primates, prairie dogs, and other creatures show that we're not the only species to apply so-called "higher" forms of reasoning. We're not even the sole "tool-using animal," because chimps, parrots, and crows are well documented as tool-users. Where is the logic area? Next to the fame corner There's no evidence that your body is older than your "logical mind," whatever that may mean. There isn't a so-called "logical" area of the brain, although certain sections process kinds of information that some people would characterize as "logical." Cognitive scientists caution against self-deception: people are rarely as "logical" and "rational" and "sequential" as they believe themselves to be. According to a brain imaging study presented in Science, even if an ethical problem is posed in strictly rational terms, people's emotional responses guide their solutions. Studies prove that people in fact do not react to things they don't consciously see — probably because we're not conscious more than 90 percent of our waking lives. (How do you know you aren't conscious in a particular situation? If you're not self-conscious you're actually unconscious — one of the weirder facts of cognitive science.) Humans are generally not aware of environmental details. We perceive and remember only what we concentrate on (this is a function of the human brain called inattentional blindness). In one famous study titled "Gorillas in Our Midst," which documents change blindness, scientists learned that when a gorilla was standing in plain sight in front of test subjects they could not see it. All the mindless chatter the DeAmicis provide about the subconscious ignores the fact that, as Candace Pert says in Molecules of Emotion, "the body is the subconscious mind."
The DeAmicis believe that humans carry terrifying genetic memories of saber-toothed tigers (pages 12, 119, 178 and 190) "predator-tigers" (115 and 117) and "genetic memories" of claws (177, 178, 180)	There's no such thing as "genetic memory" — it's a typical misunderstanding of genetics, bordering on pseudoscience — but it is a common component of racist propaganda. What is it doing in a book on feng shui? And what about the crackpot concept of "ancient programming" of our bodies—who did this "programming" and when? How? Why? You can't help but think of the aliens who sent our monkey forebears the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey—cue the music! The wonderful book Monster of God mentions sabertooths (feline and marsupial) in addressing humanity's relationship with predators. It explains all predators' hold on the human psyche as cultural transmission—we are, after all, prey animals. We were a yummy feast for eagles before we walked out of Africa, just as monkeys still are today. Professor Cavalli-Sforza reminds us in The Great Human Diasporas that culture "tends to remain unaltered and change occurs only with difficulty." (page 214)
Geomancy, they say, is a "Western art used for thousands of years to place and design buildings" (page 7). Geomancy dates "back to the Great Pyramid" which "has defied dating." (page 184)	According to the Oxford English Dictionary, geomancy appeared in vernacular English in 1362 (vernacular English at this time was the language of the lowest classes; Latin and French were spoken by the middle class, gentry, and nobles). Geomancy's first mention is from Langland's Piers Plowman where it is unfavorably compared to the level of expertise a person needs for astronomy ("gemensye [geomesye] is gynful of speche"). In 1386 Chaucer used the Parson's Tale to poke fun at geomancy in Canterbury Tales: "What say we of them that believe in divynailes as ... geomancie ..." Geomancy has always been a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground or how handfuls of dirt land when you toss them. It was explained as divination (in the same sentence with pyromancy and hydromancy) in the best-selling Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1400); as "geomantie that superstitious arte" in a book of alchemy (1477); and defined in a book of Agrippa's magic (1569) as a form of divination "which doth divine by certaine conjectures taken of similitudes of the cracking of the Earthe." Can you take the DeAmicis seriously about the Great Pyramid? They prefer the mental masturbation of cranks to centuries of painstaking archeology (including information about Ny Swt Wsrt). Moreover, they fail to see the flaw in their logic when they claim geomancy dates from the time of a structure that they believe cannot be accurately dated.
something called horizon-based astrology allegedly shares the same foundations as "the Asian Compass School of Feng Shui" (page 8)	There's no clear definition of this horizon-thing in Tango because the DeAmicis require ambiguity to spin their tales. One or two sentences to promote a falsity is much less demanding than explaining in depth. It takes quite a bit of work to explain why this claim is false, but consider it unlikely that the DeAmicis can provide as detailed an explanation for taking their idea seriously. That's because you are expected to accept their ideas without questioning and without any corroborating evidence. Their horizon-thing apparently refers to the circular diagrams used by modern astrologers to plot charts. The circular diagram shows planets' positions with respect to the horizon. Three Zodiacs, Not One The Western zodiac favored by the DeAmicis differs appreciably from the Vedic (Indian subcontinent) and the Chinese. The 1997 symposium honoring the Ancient Beijing Observatory featured speakers that explained the differences between Western, Vedic, and Chinese astronomy and astrology. Dr. Ramatosh Sarkar emphasized that the Vedic system absorbed more Greek influence (thanks to the conquests of Alexander of Macedon and the formation of the Seleucid Empire) and it's based on the ecliptic, like the Greek version. However, ancient Chinese astronomy (like modern Western astronomy) focused on the celestial equator. Ancient Greeks and Chinese lived in the same latitude and saw the same stars but few of their astronomical myths share common themes. Ancient Chinese organized the sky like the terrestrial community and society, centered on Beidou (the celestial clock and season-marker) and the pole star (the emperor). Greek astronomical myths show no systematic organization and focus on individuals. What few mythical themes the cultures share aren't ones that most people know. For example, both cultures used conflict to explain the antipodal positions of what Westerners call Orion and Scorpius. How on Earth did the DeAmicis decide that artifacts of modern Western astrology share the same "foundations" as the primary tool of feng shui? They made it up! They didn't check their ideas against the facts — or if they did, the facts got in the way. Remember, so-called Form School and so-called Compass School both use compasses, though different models. The drawing used in Tango to illustrate this odd belief looks like a crude imitation of one in Echoes of the Ancient Skies, which shows an ancient astronomer (not an astrologer!) making a precise observation. However, Western astrologers haven't studied the sky for nearly 3,000 years. The Problem with Astrology — Western, That Is Western astrology stopped skywatching sometime around 500 BCE. As NASA says, "the 'sign' assigned to each month in horoscopes is not the constellation where the Sun is in that month, but where it would have been in ancient times." The sun used to enter Cancer at the moment of the summer solstice but as of 1990 the sun enters Taurus at the summer solstice — that's two constellations away from the position that astrologers assign to people born on June 21. John Mosley of Griffith Observatory chides If you were born during the first two weeks of May 2600 years ago, you were born when the sun was in both the sign and constellation of Taurus. Now during those weeks the sun is in Aries. Astrologically speaking, you are still a Taurus; astronomically speaking you are an Aries. Likewise, most Libras are really Virgos, and so on. (And to add insult to injury, most Sagittarians are really Ophiuchi.) Of the 366 possible birthdates, the signs astrologers use correspond to the astronomical constellation 14 percent of the time. The astrological sign is off by one constellation for 84 percent and by two constellations for the other 2 percent. Consider how precession affects the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn: they need to be updated to the Tropics of Gemini and Sagittarius. Now you know why astrology doesn't get any respect. Read on to learn why a feng shui compass has absolutely nothing in common with Western astrology. Western Zodiac The Western zodiac is a Greek invention based on the drifting of the sun ("tropical time"). Ancient Greeks created it from the constellations used by Babylonian astronomers. In fact, the Greeks owed nearly everything they knew about astronomy to the skywatchers of the Fertile Crescent, who started making horoscopes around 500 BCE. (Notice the connection between the fossilization of skywatching and the origins of horoscopes.) The Greeks invented what we know as "Western astrology" — that is, astrology for the individual. They transmitted to history their belief that the planets actually influenced life on Earth. Ancient Chinese, like the Babylonians, thought only that celestial phenomena were postings in the chat room of the gods. The postings were commentary, not a physical influence. The constellations used in Western astrology range within 8 or so degrees either side of the ecliptic (the apparent path of the sun). The sun's path was known as Pidnu sha Shane (Furrow of Heaven) to the Babylonians. They kept track of heliacal risings of the Directing Bull (Taurus, but especially Aldebaran) to mark the beginning of their year. But before Aldebaran-Taurus assumed this key function the marker-star of the year was Orion—the constellation of Osiris. (Ancient Chinese knew the belt of Orion as the constellation Shen.) Not all constellations that fall within the Western zodiac are used by astrologers. The sun actually passes through 13 constellations. Serpent Holder, Ophiucus, is conveniently omitted — possibly a superstitious hangover from medieval Christianity (Christians have longstanding problems with the number 13). There are more constellations to consider if you step away from medieval Christian ideas of the heavens: Jane Sellers notes that Al Jauzah was considered by the Arabs (the inheritors of Greek science) to be part of the zodiac. Al Jauzah is composed of the stars of the constellations Gemini and Orion. Depending on your criteria there are at least 21, possibly 24 constellations in the Western zodiac. Keep in mind that the ancient astronomers of the Mediterranean and Near East looked to the east for their observations—that's why we use the term "orienting" (which is really "easting"). While modern astronomy advises that you face south for the best observations, the ancient skywatchers of the West "easted" themselves. East and west were up and down. That's why the equinoxes assumed importance in Western calendars (beginning with Babylonians, who celebrated their New Year near the spring equinox). Vedic Zodiac The so-called Vedic zodiac (Nirayana) is based on sidereal or "star time." The Vedic calendar is based on astronomical observations at the equinoxes and solstices. Vedic astronomy and the Vedic calendar originated in Neolithic cities in the Indus Valley but they contain influences from further west (probably because, at one time, the language spoken in the Indus Valley was spoken as far west as Iran). Even the numbering structure of yugas in Indian astronomy was borrowed from Babylonian astronomers. You can see the cultural connections in the constellations. Subhash Kak notes that "constellations in the Rigveda and the Brahmanas, such as the Rikshas (the Great Bear and the Little Bear), the two divine dogs (Canis Major and Canis Minor), the twin Asses (in Cancer), the Goat (Capricornus) and the Heavenly Boat (Argo Navis), are the same as in Europe." The original diagram used to create Western horoscopes matches the diagram used by Vedic astrologers in North India. This occurred because of the cultural exchange between Mesopotamia, Greece, and the Indus Valley. According to Subhash Kak, "We don't know who the authors of the Vedas were," but Western science dates the Vedas to 1500 to 1200 BCE — a time that matches the archeological record for Indian trade colonies in Mesopotamia. (In Egypt this is the era of the New Kingdom; in China this was the era of the Shang.) Interestingly, the diagram used in Southern Indian Vedic astrology matches the diagram used for Zi wei Dou shu (Purple Glow North Star Calculations). No doubt this influence also occurred in cultural exchange along trade routes — likely during the Song era (960 to 1279 CE) — because tradition holds that Zi wei Dou shu originated from Master Chen Duan, a Daoist from tenth-century Huashan in Shaanxi. Chinese Zodiac Chinese astrology is like Babylonian astrology only in the original use and the number of signs, not the actual signs or the cycles of time charted in them. Babylonian astrology calculated the future of a country, not individuals. It shares this focus with Chinese astrology, which originally calculated horoscopes only for rulers and nations. Westerners created the need for individual horoscopes. Ancient Chinese "astrology" has always encompassed a great deal more than Western astrology. Consider the job of the astrology official known as the Bao Zhang Shi who observed the effects of space weather to provide predictions for flood, drought, good harvests, famine, and other portents. Modern scholarship has determined that the "vapors" watched by these court officials were what we call the auroras. Neolithic Chinese discovered sunspots and carefully observed them through safety lenses. At least by the 14th century BCE (during the Shang era) the Bureau of Astronomy established the solar year at 365.25 days (still found as degrees on a Luopan, which can measure time as an angle) and lunation at 295 days. Shang-era astronomers recognized the two cycles (Metonic and Calyppic) Westerners attribute to Greek astronomers who lived nearly 1,000 years later; Shang astronomers also recognized the saros cycle. The sexagenary (ganzhi) cycle of time probably did not begin with the Shang, but oracle bones record its common use. All these cycles are found in feng shui computations. The so-called Chinese zodiac is based on "Jupiter time" and the cycles it tracks are shorter and longer than those in Western astrology. The "signs" of the Chinese "zodiac" are animals associated with the 12 directions and 12 double-hours (the Earthly Branches) and largely function as mnemonics. Ancient Chinese, like modern astronomers, used equatorial astronomy; Western astrology follows the ecliptic. The Branches derive from the 12-year orbit of Jupiter (Sui) — actually the orbit takes 11.86 Earth-years, but the Chinese rounded it off to 12. In Chinese science, a "month" in the Jupiter cycle indicates an Earth year. Five multiples of 12 branches indicate the Jupiter cycle of grand conjunctions with Saturn (5 x 12 = 60). A more precise version of the Branches consists of 24 points within the meteorological cycle used by Chinese (and found on a Luopan as the 24 Mountains).These points coincide with other points 15º apart on the ecliptic. It takes about 15.2 days for the sun to traverse a point, creating a cycle of 365.25 days (and thus each degree on a Luopan ticks off a day). See page 48 in my book for the relationships between the jieqi and zhongqi, Gregorian dates, and solar longitude. The Heaven Center Cross Line, also known as the Red Cross Grid (the red cords on a Luopan) are the warp and woof of heaven. The Cross Line indicates the axle of the universe — in other words it marks Hamlet's Mill, because some old Shipans featured a drawing of Beidou where the needle housing (the Central Pool of Heaven) now sits. The red strings or cross markings are used on Luopans to read direction and meaning but they also indicate the equinoctial and solstitial colures. Where are the connections between Western astrology and the Luopan?

Opening your mouth only to change the foot previously in there

The DeAmicis are always an entertaining read. This email was received around January 1, 2001. The punctuation and spelling were left intact.

What They Say	Reality Check
Hello, This is Ralph DeAmicis and I'm writing to say that if you were going to interview me you should have informed me of that at the beginning. That is customary in the media.	Ah, the old Internet-is-the-media trick! Ralph expects that anyone who asks him a pointed question about his writing, marketing, or other public statements should be a journalist or someone who can get him into the public eye and publish glowing reports of his exploits. It doesn't occur to him that inquisitive feng shui practitioners, or less-sympathetic individuals and organizations, could be interested in what he says and might want to question him about his comments and activities. If he doesn't like someone familiar with his profession asking pointed questions, you know Ralph would not be comfortable with scrutiny from concerned citizens, consumer advocates, the Federal Trade Commission, or a district attorney in the state of Pennsylvania tipped off to his fortune-telling exploits.
Denny Fairchild, one of the other writers in the field did warn me about you.	I certainly would not expect anything less from Denny, as we go way back. People warned me about him, he sent me several gifts, and now he is keeping the circle going.
You know nothing about us and yet you condem us., You have easily the most negative site on Feng Shui that I have ever seen, and in 30 years as a professional herbalist and environmental designer I have learned that solutions are rarely as simple or one directional as you seem to think.	Here is where things start to get interesting. Is Ralph saying that I have to know them personally to condemn their business methods? That's not how businesses perform in the US or other places in the world. People analyze marketing claims every day. Some employees of the Federal Trade Commission make a living doing it. Of course, they also write letters to companies that make fraudulent claims, and even haul business owners into court for unscrupulous business practices. Ralph just doesn't like scrutiny. It is especially comforting to know that people who make a living from convincing people they should use anchors to keep their houses in place think that FSUR is a "negative" site. The continuing long and impressive list of Ralph's careers: Background in navigation and astronomy Herbalist (30 years) Environmental designer (30 years)(this is a licensed profession)
We curently run one of the largest training programs in the country, and we've been running it for five years.. Most of our seminar leaders are also Master Herbalists. becasue as I'm sure you know that is a part of the original tradition.	If this is their version of herbalism, then they've been a little too liberal with their use of the "gentle herb" and it has clouded their thinking. Master herbalists, as they understand the concept, have nothing to do with feng shui. A "master herbalist" is a western concept; Chinese herbalists operate using different diagnostics and a categorization of herbs that uses taste, temperature, and meridians. Here is a typical curriculum for a master herbalist. Now look at the herbalist curriculum at Emperor's College, one of the finest universities for Chinese traditional medicine. Here you can take a test that will help you understand the basic differences between the two practices. Feng shui and Chinese traditional medicine parted ways thousands of years ago; even then, people typically specialized in medicine or feng shui, just like today. Ralph is excrementizing when he blathers about "the original tradition" of feng shui including master (or any other) herbalists. He would be hard-pressed to name three. Anyone can set themselves up to run classes. That doesn't mean the classes are worthwhile.
What the hell have you ever done except insult good people for doing the best they can?	If this is the best Ralph can do, it explains his many careers. He doesn't like his business practices analyzed and publicized (especially the fraudulent ones), so that makes FSUR "negative." Just like Consumer Reports is "negative." As for the rest of it, I'm reminded of a quote: I'm not intending to imply insult or judgment here but I am curious to know in order to be able to respond to your posts in an appropriate manner, so please forgive what appears to be, but in fact is not intended as, an insulting question: Are you stupid? —Melinda Shore
If I sound pissed that's becasue I am. IF YOU WANT TO START A REAL DISCUSSION THAT'S FINE, BUT BE UP FRONT ABOUT WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOUR INTENTIONS ARE.	Ralph's temper got in the way of his memory. He said Denny Fairchild "warned" him about me. I told him that I was a technical writer and have studied Feng Shui from an anthropological standpoint for twenty-some-odd years. Nothing was hidden from him: it was one feng shui practitioner asking another about what they do. He's just sore that another practitioner exposed his business practices.
And like I said on the phone, I'm a very big man who spent years as a professional craftsman, master sculptor, stone carver, and environmental engineer. Running scared is not something I typicaly do.	Sorry, Ralph: in the US, six-foot-two is not "a very big man" unless you're obese. (Six-foot-two is the height of the average American male.) If I called someone that short "a big guy" they'd think I was telling them they are fat. My brother, however, fits the contemporary description of a "big man" because he is several inches taller than Ralph; but he isn't obese. He also isn't one to repeatedly tell someone that he's a "very big man" who doesn't typically run scared. He is smart enough to know that would make him sound more like he was trying to convince himself than shock and awe others. The continuing long and impressive list of Ralph's careers: Background in navigation and astronomy Herbalist (30 years) Environmental designer (30 years) (a licensed professional) Professional craftsman Master sculptor Stone carver Environmental engineer (a licensed professional that differs from an environmental designer)
However if you're just going to waste my time with your pompous, intellectual BS, then don't bother, because honestly I'm too busy. Get a life, and develop a little tolerance.	How interesting it is to be accused of "pompous, intellectual BS" by someone who markets himself as "Dr Ralph DeAmicis." I guess it takes one to know one (at least in the BS accusation). One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience. —Alice James
I'm just sorry that I let you pull me into your negativity, but some situations demand the truth and you seem to be steeped in falsehood, and I dislike having my site associated with yours for that reason.	Take heart, Ralph: The readers of FSUR aren't sorry you took the time to express yourself. However, they think your "steeped in falsehood" claim is projection (oops, sorry; that's one of those "pompous, intellectual BS" terms). After all, FSUR provides research sources and includes links to websites for nearly everything that is posted. Even you, Ralph, can corroborate the claims posted on this site, which is more than anyone can say for any of your articles and pronouncements (and G-d help anyone who asks you for sources: You're insulted!). I try to write clearly enough to explain to everyone what I mean and how feng shui works without prying into their background (which is an invasion of privacy and against the law in many states). That's how writing is supposed to work; it's not an exercise in obfuscation and confusion unless you're doing it wrong. Best of all, from the perspective of nearly everyone who takes the time to email, I'm not pulling new ideas for feng shui gimmicks out of my bodily orifices, or acquiring them like viruses when I go to seminars and conventions.
Our methods produce wonderful results for many many people. We share the knowledge freely and we give herbs away by the box.	Testimonials are "because I said so" and indicate a faith-based mentality.
Also do you actually know Sean Xenja? He is a wonderful, kind, generous, highly talented practitioner, who is a real resource. Ralph DeAmicis	Seann and I have swapped chatty emails, but it's been many years. These days, he's too busy trying to dodge people who are following him and Susan Levitt out of morbid curiosity.

Delusions of adequacy

The DeAmicis have created another mental theme park in this excerpt "Which School Works Best for You? Understanding Why there are Diverse Schools of Feng Shui" from Power Feng Shui (also known as Feng Shui American Style), the newest waste of perfectly good trees churned out by their vanity publishing house.

Before we examine their latest literary atrocity, it would do well for us to recite Michael Shermer's mantra on Baloney Detection.

What They Say	Reality Check
Your thoughts affect your emotions, your physical state influences your thinking, your thoughts influence your body and so on and on and on.	Robert Park (echoing James Alcock's famous article) reminds us that our brains are "belief engines." They process information from our senses and generate new beliefs about the world which are selected by the brain to be consistent with already-held beliefs, but they are created without any regard for their relation to reality. "Your thoughts affect your emotions..." is urban mythology: a meme to infect the brains of the credulous! The truth is something entirely different. Your brain shows that humans developed consciousness twice: once as apes and once as humans. Let's see what's said by Candace Pert, a well-known pioneer in this field: Peptides and other informational molecules are biochemicals of emotion. The body is the unconscious mind. The emotional brain is not confined to the brain but includes the entire nervous system. Molecules of Emotion, page 141 Antonio Damasio's lifework on the neurobiology of emotion also exposes the DeAmicis' assertion as urban folklore. Like Baruch Spinoza (see Damasio's book) Damasio thinks that neurobiology shows continuous signals from the body to the brain provide a continuous backdrop for the mind. In fact, I doubt we could be conscious in the usual sense of the term if we did not have a backdrop. Body signalling is also the essential substrate for feelings. When we have an emotion we alter the state of the body in a variety of ways, and then we register the resulting changes in the brain's body maps and feel the emotions. Emotions come first, feelings second. (Emphasis added) Emotions are unlearned responses to certain classes of stimuli. We are equipped to have emotions, thanks to evolution. When we emote we alter the state of the organism in a rather profound manner—the internal milieu, the viscera, the musculature—and we behave in a particular way. The DeAmicis also fail to take into account that humans, like many creatures, have two brains: the one everyone already knows about (the one in the head) and the enteric brain (the one in your gut). To add insult to intellectual injury, the DeAmicis betray their reliance on Descartes' ideas of how the world works (which, as it turns out, were nearly all completely wrong). Descartes (like the DeAmicis) relied on "folk theories," as Lakoff and Johnson called them (we call them urban myths or memes) to substantiate his concepts of the world. Unfortunately, most of what we accept as how the world works isn't how it really works. Most of human thinking is unconscious, largely metaphorical, and imaginative. It's emotionally engaged, not dispassionate. Being human doesn't mean we can draw on some sort of transcendent thinking — we cannot know our minds by self-reflection. We have to approach things empirically. In fact, because of our different conceptual systems, reason isn't something universal in humans. Our bodies and our brains, along with our interactions with the world around us, provide mostly unconscious cues for our sense of what is real.
An ancient herbal tradition called Signatures explains that we can know plants by their shape and color, and their similarity to parts of the body. The human body, on the most intimate level, knows the world through the shapes and colors it perceives. It's from this physiological reality that Form School developed. It could be called the physical, shape or taste school, because the body touches and tastes the world in order to know it.	The Doctrine of Signatures began as a spiritual philosophy with the belief that the Christian God marked everything with a sign that indicated the item's true purpose. The writings of Galen (131 to 200 CE) allude to this idea, but the book Signatura Rerum ("The Signature of All Things") written by Jacob Boehme and published in the first half of the 17th century shows the idea as a complete philosophy. The Doctrine of Signatures didn't influence feng shui because feng shui was already 5,000 years old. Joey Yap, in "Identifying a Classical Feng Shui System" (2002) explains the beginnings of feng shui from one school and it did not apply "psychology, superstition or make-believe positive thinking." This original school, as scholars know from archeological evidence, involved astronomy and the location of astronomical features in the landscape, including solar gain. Take a look at what's known of the archaeology of feng shui. The two classical divisions of feng shui (typically called San Yuan and San He) include the following so-called "schools" — more adequately understood as techniques: Xuan Kong (time and space methods) Xuan Kong Fei Xing (flying stars methods) Xuan Kong Da Gua (64 hexagrams methods) Xuan Kong Shui Fa (time and space water methods) Zi Bai (purple white flying stars methods) Ba Zhai (eight mansions) San Yuan Dragon Gate Eight Formation Major Wandering Stars Minor Wandering Stars San He Luan Dou (environmental appearance and landforms) San He Shui Fa (water methods) Qi Men Dunjia (mystical doorways and magic armor) Of course this list doesn't exhaust the techniques, it just names the more common ones. Keep in mind that mathematical computations form the basis of all of these techniques. To quote Joey Many of you have heard of Form School and Compass School. These two terms should not be used to describe the schools of feng shui. Every classical or authentic school of feng shui uses forms and compass. (Emphasis added.)
Your physical body is aware of a multitude of information that it rarely shares with the conscious mind.	Again from Candace Pert: Peptides and other informational molecules are biochemicals of emotion. The body is the unconscious mind. The emotional brain is not confined to the brain but includes the entire nervous system. The conscious mind can explore seemingly infinite pathways to the body and unconscious mind. Page 141) To repeat: most of human thinking is unconscious, largely metaphorical, and imaginative. It's emotionally engaged, not dispassionate. Being human doesn't mean we can draw on some sort of transcendent thinking — we cannot know our minds by self-reflection. We have to approach things empirically. In fact, because of our different conceptual systems, reason isn't something universal in humans. Our bodies and our brains, along with our interactions with the world around us, provide mostly unconscious cues for our sense of what is real.
A clear indication that you're using Form methods is that someone is moving heavy objects around.	Which "form methods" would those be, exactly, when San He feng shui uses mathematical formulas as its methods?
Coming from below, the physical schools tend to be feminine and Yin in nature.	Barbara Walker notes that "constant use of higher and lower indicates that the New Age world tends to be intensely hierarchical and thus opposed to a basic tenet of feminism, although feminist spirituality is often classified as a New Age movement." (Emphasis in original.) page 34 Based on the previous list of techniques, which "physical schools" do the DeAmicis define as "feminine and yin"? Racial profiling with the DeAmicis There also exists a disquieting racist subtext in all of the DeAmicis' works. In Feng Shui and the Tango they said that The Asian culture is yin, small dark-haired people, insular societies, wet-soil crops . . . . Western cultures are yang. pages 41 and 42 For the DeAmicis, Chinese astrology is "graceful" while western astrology is "precise." page 149 The racial profile the DeAmicis use in their books, according to their bizarre understanding of Yin Yang Theory, is yin = small lower moist graceful Asian ... feminine yang = large upper dry precise Euro-American ... masculine This is all racist nonsense. Ralph and Lahni are merely broadcasting to the world their poor understanding of Yin Yang Theory by forging it into a finely-tempered weapon of racial and sexual prejudice. In Chinese science (of which feng shui is a part) yin is supplied when movement reaches a limit and comes to rest. Yin and yang are the only two components of qi operating in nature successively in a wavelike motion. Cultural ignorance There is no one "Asian culture" because Asia is a huge continent — Israelis are from Western Asia, Uyghurs from Central Asia, Mongolians from Northern Asia, the Han are from Eastern Asia, and Sikhs and Hmong are from South-east Asia. Not all of these are "small" people and not all of them are consistently "dark-haired." There are plenty of strongly patriarchal cultures in Asia (including Chinese) whose members would deeply resent being labeled small, moist and anything remotely feminine. A variety of crops are grown throughout Asia, including rice. However, rice growing is generally confined to particular climatic conditions. Most of Asia does not provide an adequate climate to grow rice and never has. The DeAmicis also don't seem to know about agriculture in their own country. California is the premier rice-growing region in the US and supplies much of the festival rice (prime-quality rice) to Asia. But in California rice is often grown as a dry-soil crop! The bald assertions about "insular societies" are merely the DeAmicis projecting their own values and beliefs. They really should know better: Americans tend to marry within their own social caste (read "The Mating Game" by Rebecca Gardyn in Census magazine) and repeatedly legislate against immigrants and foreigners in their midst (although the US is a nation of immigrants). Americans invented racial profiling, including the term. The DeAmicis use racial stereotypes to broadcast their knowledge of feng shui. How much more insular (and xenophobic) can you get? Body slam The DeAmicis fail to differentiate Chinese body types. They make the blanket assertion that all Asians are "small" (Ralph, who is average height for an American male at six-foot-two, is of course comparing them to himself). Perhaps they saw someone Chinese at a distance, or on television; they don't seem to encounter Chinese in real life. How do they explain the many tall people in China (as tall as, and taller than, Ralph) and Chinese basketball stars like Shangai-born Yao Ming who stands seven-foot-two (2.26 meters)? By their sexism and racial prejudices shall you know these alleged experts and their profound ignorance. Sexual politicking Along with the racial/ethnic subtexts the DeAmicis assign gendered properties to yin and yang, crops, astrology, and feng shui. These valuations provide us with a deep understanding of the hierarchy the DeAmicis assign to the categories Euro-American and Chinese, and that serve as the basis for their discrimination. They communicate the supposed "delicacy" of women and the supposed "strength" of men, here masquerading as yin and yang valuations. The logic conveys that Chinese culture and artifacts are frail, female, and lower status than strong, male, Euro-American culture and artifacts. This is the mindset of colonials and other exploiters of indigenous knowledge. Thinking yang is "dominant," culturally and otherwise, and rightfully lording it over other groups, asserts privileges that are the invention of the authors. Such subtexts are common because a prejudiced person loves two-stroke judgments (yin and yang, in the DeAmicis' case). Such solutions provide definition because prejudiced individuals don't tolerate ambiguity . As the DeAmicis teach classes they infect others with their racial prejudices.
The weakness of the Form approach is that it requires a huge amount of effort to do the changes properly. There aren't a lot of quick fixes, or easy solutions here. Someone is going to get muddy and sweaty by the time the corrections are in place. This was a favorite practice in antiquity, where the wealthy and powerful would shape the land, and through that, direct the lives of those within their domain.	In one sense the first statement is true, because You Have To Know What You Are Doing, which means You Have To Have a Sound Education In Feng Shui. Why should a sound education and expertise be demonized as a "weakness"? Do you want to hire someone who thinks expertise = weak? What does that say about your ability to think? No one needs to get "muddy and sweaty" to effect real change. And the authors mislead the public by relegating their so-called form school to "antiquity" because it's still in wide use today and avidly studied. We still use astronomy, and that's how feng shui began: astronomy manifested in the landscape. "Shaping the land" to "direct the lives of those within their domain" is actually a geographical mythology developed by 19th-century Aryan mythologists. Their ideas were embraced and embellished by the Nazis. Read Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935.
To create your well being, remember that what you think creates who you are. How you talk to yourself foretells the future you'll enjoy. The ideas you build your life with become the pillars supporting the dome above your temple. This is the approach of the Compass School, as well as the Geomancy passed down through the Egyptians.	Toss away the first three sentences to get to what they really mean. There's no evidence in text or archeology that what the DeAmicis call "compass school" is any of what they say. For example, the notion of "what you think creates who you are" is straight out of the positive thinking school which developed in 19th century spiritualist circles in Europe and America. The DeAmicis should be able to quote at length from any of the classic feng shui texts to substantiate their assertions. Additionally, they are unclear as to what they define as "geomancy" and what was "passed down through the Egyptians." They also claim geomancy dates from the type of the pyramids at Giza which they say defy dating. They have no clue, but they'll be quite happy to take your money anyway. The reason this material is so hazy is that (a) they were too lazy to look up the facts so (b) they're making it up and (c) that makes it easier to sell to the credulous.
. . . the human experience rushes about, full of emotions, yearnings and daily needs. This is the most emotional and ephemeral way to approach Feng Shui. ... The Moon is the fastest moving object in the sky.	This is written not to make sense, but non-sense. It's hard to know what is meant by an emotional and fleeting (ephemeral) approach to feng shui, especially when what's thrown in at the end doesn't connect with the beginning of the thought! Cogito ergo non sequiteur.
This emotional approach is found in the Mystical Schools that make their changes in the interior environment. It is a person-concerned method that works through managing the flow of human energy.	"Mystical Schools," of course, is given no definition, so you can use your imagination. It really means nothing. Like most confidence tricks it allows your brain to fill in the blanks. Additionally, "human energy" was originally defined by the spiritualist movements of the 19th century, and later used by the Granddaddy of all self-help authors (Norman Vincent Peale). It actually refers to your determination or willpower.
In an apartment house brimming with people, the collective human energy is often the most powerful element at work. Understanding how to control the resonance of that energy is essential. Recognizing the design of the human aura and how to activate sections of it can bring quick results.	Why is it important to be able to control the auras of people in an apartment building? Are we hoping for feng shui fascism? "Human energy" is determination. There's no "resonance" of determination. I challenge the DeAmicis to identify the frequency of this alleged "human energy" and its "resonance," and the instrument they used to record it, then register and win the million-dollar prize James Randi offers for such assertions. There's no such thing as "auras" , and no way to "activate sections of it" unless you are truly the most gullible of individuals. In that case, you deserve to study with these quacks.
This approach is often implemented through the use of small objects like chimes, mirrors crystals, flowers, plants and pictures .... you don't even have to get muddy to do it. It's an easy system to teach, and simple to use. It doesn't require bulldozers, compasses or adding machines.	Earlier they made a comment about getting muddy and sweaty. They also claimed that "there aren't a lot of quick fixes, or easy solutions" — yet here just the opposite is suggested. They hope that by now you have forgotten the earlier remark. They think they have hoodwinked you into believing their version of "form school" which is an "easy system to teach, and simple to use." Fraudsters hope you have a short memory, and they prefer ambiguous language to make it easier to wriggle their way out of any legal action that may result.
] These folks aren't well-educated about the subject matter they're discussing, or this excerpt would have a lot less psychobabble, word salad, and no racist agenda. They tell you NOTHING about the techniques or "schools" of feng shui but plenty about their ignorance and biases. As Robert Park notes, if authors seem to have lost touch with reality in their books there's no way their next publication will return to it. Believing the lie, and selling it to consumers willing to believe the most outlandish things, is far more lucrative and easy.