Interview with a Feng Shui Expert

T. Raphael Simons called a couple of months ago to begin advertising in Innerchange. He informed me at that time that he had just moved from New York to Durham and he wanted to advertise his Feng Shui services. Little did I know that I had just talked with one of my most favorite Feng Shui authors. I personally enjoy studying Feng Shui, and I have at least 15 books by different authors on the subject to prove it! When I'm in one of my "Feng Shui crazes" I pull out all of the books to compare and research something in particular. His book, Feng Shui Step by Step , is one to which I refer most often...mostly because it has a more personal approach than other books.

I had an opportunity to meet Raphael on a warm, sunny North Carolina day in February. His kind, easy demeanor made our first meeting comfortable. As a published author on Feng Shui whose books have been well received, he's unpretentious and seems to downplay his extraordinary skill as a Feng Shui expert.

Through emails and in person, Raphael shared with me his background in Feng Shui as well as some thoughts on the westernization of this most ancient form of art and science.

In 1988, I began learning Feng Shui. I was living in New York City, writing poetry and making a living by giving psychic and astrological readings. Since 1980, I had been studying Western astrology with the late Ivy Jacobson.

A client told me about a certain Chinese geomancer who had come from Los Angeles to site the tomb of her Buddhist teacher who had just died. What she told me aroused my interest, so much so that I asked a Chinese friend if she knew of anyone in Chinatown who practiced this thing. A couple of weeks later she called me up and gave me the name of Terry Lee who, she said, had a great reputation in the Chinese community.

I immediately went over to see Terry and asked if he would teach me, only to be met with utter incredulity. He refused to have anything to do with me, but sent me home with the instruction to call him up. When I called him up, he told me to come over to see him again and, upon coming back to see him, he simply told me to go home and call him up another time.

This sort of testing went on for days until he finally scribbled down thirty-seven Chinese characters on a sheet of paper, saying that if I could memorize them, he would teach me. Four days later I came back with all the characters memorized. After testing my ability to read the characters, he accepted me as his student. He told me he had no intention to teach other Westerners and that he had only one other student, a Chinese pupil. It is a tradition among Chinese wizards to jealously guard their knowledge and to accept very few students. Many of the Feng Shui experts in Chinatown would send spies over to Terry to find out what he was doing. But Terry was wise to them all.

My Feng Shui studies with Terry embraced the full range of classical techniques: Chinese face reading, Ba Tzu and Jyo Hsing astrologies, powerful Lopan (Chinese compass) methods, divination methods, dowsing, and various secret methods for dealing positively with spirits and ghosts.

How long did you train with Terry Lee? Was your training primarily conducted with just him and in New York, or did you travel to the Orient as well and have you had some training by other masters?

I had one primary Feng Shui teacher, Terry Lee, but learned some things from a Tibetan teacher, Kenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche. I didn't go to China or anywhere outside New York City to learn Feng Shui. Most of what goes on in China now, since the cultural revolution, is a far cry from the old Chinese tradition. There are some Feng Shui teachers in Hong Kong who are famous in the West, but I never felt a need to seek them out or to worry about what was going on in the lecture circuit with all those seminars. I studied with Terry two years. I have been told that what I learned is the real way to practice. On several occasions, people in Chinatown said I do Feng Shui better than many Chinese experts; that speaks well for my teacher, I think.

Does Terry Lee consider himself a Master? What types of training/experience/etc. gives one the "Master" status?

Feng Shui masters in the Chinese community are called Feng Shui experts. Master is a Western idea. What makes a Feng Shui expert is having studied with an expert and having had a lot of good experience. The Chinese are very down to earth. Certification is an American obsession, not Chinese. Among the Chinese, if the practitioner is good, he or she is an expert. Terry never gave me a certificate. Instead, he told me I was a good Feng Shui expert. That was what launched me in this art.

Do you think Feng Shui has been trivialized in the West with the plethora of authors, workshops, incorporation of ideas into interior design schools, and more?

I wouldn't say that Feng Shui has been trivialized, although I would say that very little about Feng Shui has been published in all those books. The general trend of new age interest is superficial. I don't think it is wise to practice Feng Shui without the technical know-how. If I thought it wasn't possible to do a decent form of Feng Shui without face reading and Ba Tzu and all the fancy compass methods, I wouldn't have written those books. What I put in my books was what I thought would be accessible to people and would help them arrange their spaces in ways that worked positively.

Because Feng Shui is so old, there are hundreds of secrets that go beyond what is published, even in Chinese. The Japanese have their own way of Feng Shui.

I don't think workshops are a way to learn Feng Shui. They only can give a small hint, but it takes months and months of regular lessons to learn it enough to practice. It is best taught one to one. The largest group I can teach is four students coming for weekly lessons lasting two hours for at least one year. I have never taught everything I learned.

My opinion of your book "Feng Shui Step by Step" is that it explains in an easy-to-understand format several of the essentials suggested in your article for a thorough Feng Shui "reading." Have you reviewed other Feng Shui books, and what is your opinion of their generalization of Feng Shui to the masses?

I have only scanned other people's books on Feng Shui. Frankly, I am bored by all of those Feng Shui books. I never devoted much time to reading anyone's books. I learned from a teacher without books. It seems to me that most of these books are copies of one another. One thing I assert is that Feng Shui has to be practiced with Chinese astrology. Those who practice it with no knowledge of astrology are not doing it.

Some may say that not utilizing all the components in a Feng Shui "reading" appropriately/properly could actually be harmful to the people getting the "reading." What are your thoughts on this?

I agree that if someone uses face reading and astrology incorrectly, they can do more harm than good. If someone practices medicine without knowing what he/she is doing, they can get into a lot of hot water too.

I have run across differences between books that give me pause on what point of view is most accurate. For example, in your book you take into account the astrological influences in the difference between male and female. For instance, my birth star is a "5", but a man born in the same year has a birth star of "1". In another book by a different author, the male/female influence is not factored into the approach, and my "principle year" -- according to him -- is 1. What accounts for this difference in approach?

My approach is to use 9 Star astrology where the stars for males and females are different is the traditional Chinese way. The approach where the stars are the same for males and females is Japanese. 9 Star was developed in China, not Japan. I have tested both methods and have noticed that the Chinese method is the right one. The Chinese see male and female as mirrors of one another. Therefore they do astrological calculations for males and females in opposite ways. The 9 star sequence for males is 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. The 9 star sequence for females is 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9. They meet at 3. A male and female born in a 3 year both have 3 as their star. A male born in a 4 year has 4 as his star, but a female born in a 4 year has 2 as her star. I use the Chinese methods. Most of these people who wrote books on Feng Shui using the Japanese calculation evidently studied this out of books written by Japanese authors. No Chinese Feng Shui practitioner uses Japanese methods. I have no idea how come the Japanese got this way of theirs; it's a distortion of the Chinese tradition.

Are you involved with any Feng Shui Institutes/Societies/Associations? If so, how do you find your participation with them to be beneficial to you and your clients?

I don't belong to any Feng Shui associations except the one I founded: Feng Shui Arts. I give my students certification under that aegis. There are no Feng Shui associations in China.

What types of "spaces" have you Feng Shuied?

I mostly work with people's homes. Nonetheless, I have done many places of business, including restaurants, doctors' offices, stock and commodities brokers' offices, clothing manufacturers' establishments, clothing stores, furniture showrooms, and so on. I have helped people recover from serious illnesses, generate successful businesses, get married, and have children. At one point, I seemed to have gotten the reputation of getting people married. Someone I had worked with got married within a year of seeing me. She wasn't involved with anyone at the time I did the Feng Shui for her. She told all her single girlfriends what happened, and the same thing happened for each of them I worked for. I was amazed.

T. Raphael Simons' books, Feng Shui Step by Step and Feng Shui Strategies for Business Success, are published by Crown Trade Paperbacks. You can order them on his website, www.trs-fengshui.com. You can contact Raphael directly for consultations at
(919) 425-2307.