How to read the Environment around your Home
In Feng Shui principles, looking for the four Celestial Creatures in your surrounding environment is a sign of being in an auspicious and favourable area.
While there is a lot we can do when it comes to tending to our personal energy and the energy inside our homes, training your Feng Shui eye to perceive the wider space around you can bring new luck and health into your life.
Learning to recognize the landforms around your home will help build your awareness when experimenting with your Environment Variable in Human Design, particularly if you resonate to a landscape environment, such as Mountains, Valleys or Shores.
Landscape Environments are more sensitive to the surrounding energy rather than the Hardscape. Where Hardscape Environments like Caves, Markets and Kitchens are concerned with what’s available to them within a Hardscape, the Landscape Environments are more sensitive to what’s going on around these Hardscapes.
Regardless of what you resonate to in your Environment Variable, whether you're Caves, Markets, Kitchens, Mountains, Valleys or Shores, these Feng Shui principles can benefit all the Human Design Environments.
Both Feng Shui and Human Design reference the Chinese iChing; they are complementary in their approach to understanding how energy moves around us. Both describe energy, chi, and spatial energetics: recognizing the formless part of our experience so we might experience new tiers of wellness.
One of the first teachings I was introduced to by Feng Shui master Lillian Too was the concept of the four celestial creatures: looking at the wider landscape of your current home to see if you can identify the Black Tortoise, the Green Dragon, the White Tiger and the Crimson Phoenix.
It’s not the end of the world if one or more of these creatures is missing, but it’s not AS ideal as it could be. Those who are strict with their Feng Shui practices would say finding these creatures around you is essential. They represent ideal spaces where energy is undulating and flowing around you in an enriching manner. Many who practice Feng Shui will create manmade changes on their property when these signs in the landforms are missing.
A more subtle option is to bring the energy of each celestial creature into your home, and into each room.
Nevertheless, if you can identify these four celestial creatures in your surrounding Environment, you are in the presence of an auspicious site.
Signs the Celestial Creatures are around you
The Black Tortoise
The land behind you should be higher.
A hill behind the home should be higher than home — this gives you support (as good support is very important in Feng Shui). What’s at your back? If you live in an apartment, is there a higher apartment behind you? This is considered good energetic support. Should you live in a flat yard, planting trees behind you can create that missing supportive energy. Like the tortoise’s back, the land behind you should always be slightly higher than the land in front of you
The Green Dragon
It is auspicious to have hills along your left.
This is about the actual land forms around you, whether they are natural or artificial. For example, taller landforms or buildings on your left represent the energy of the green dragon. The green dragon is important because it brings you luck. It is said the land has to be slightly undulating, not too flat or jagged in order to be auspicious. Consider modern ways this might show up in your reality.
The White Tiger
Represented by the hills or landforms on the right, this area should be slightly lower than the green dragon on the left.
The white tiger protects you. It’s there like a guard. Equally important to the green dragon, these are natural land formations, or modern buildings painted white to the right of you. Bringing in an abundance of the colour white on your right side is a way to subtly play with this energy if it is missing. Land on the right should always be lower than the left.
The Crimson Phoenix
This deals with the front of your house and your career opportunities. Anything that blocks the front of your house is inauspicious because it blocks opportunities from coming.
No big mountains or walls should be directly facing your house. In an apartment, if your picture window is directly facing another building, it’s not great Feng Shui. The building in the front is blocking all your opportunities. Having space before you, a small elevation on the front lawn, or having a rock in the front yard can symbolize the phoenix. It’s ideal to be able to see as far as the naked eye can see so you can dream big.
