This is a nice book that covers a lot of the basics of feng shui and has a few things new (to this reader at least). It's not perfect, but its a good introduction.
I appreciated how the book begins with a discussion of abundance and how the definition -- and therefore knowing if you succeed -- varies from person to person. There is also a later chapter that returns to the concepts of our mental state and how it affects what we manifest. Basic energy work, but often ignored within the discussion of feng shui.
What I found problematic was the author's explanation of the core of doing feng shui, creating the Bagua Map. (This is the map of your environment that you must use.) Lowe's method is to find the center of your environment instead of aligning to the front door -- and I think that's brilliant. But.
Even though Lowe addresses the fact that many of us do not live in a perfectly square area, what is ignored is how to deal with a bulgy home. As in, what I live in. Lowe advises the reader to walk from one end of the other of the home, counting steps, then mark the middle before counting the steps across the home. Where the two meet is the center. Again, I agree in concept, but in practice, while I can walk the length of my home, I cannot walk across it as it has several "jigs" between areas. Do I count in each room, add them and then divide in half? What about thick walls or closets? In the end, I couldn't make it work out, so my ability to use/ test the information was negated. (I was also irked that the author is a white woman with no cultural or social ties to China. It would be nice to have actual Chinese people writing about the system their culture created.)
Going back to positives, the idea of "falling stars" is discussed and that would add to the lore of this interesting energy work. The author also includes a discussion of how feng shui intersects with Chinese astrology.
All in all, this is probably a good book if you can work out the Bagua map.
~review by Lisa McSherry
Author: Janine Lowe
O Books, 2024
pp. 177, $12.95
