The Importance of Soil Quality in Feng Shui

Hey guys welcome to the Learn Feng Shui podcast where you'll learn Feng Shui from a classical point of view, taking out the myth and superstition. So if you're interested in learning Feng Shui, Chinese astrology, all things Chinese metaphysics as well as superstitions and myths that connect it all, you'll enjoy learning Feng Shui with me. Hey guys today we're going to discuss a lesser known aspect of Feng Shui which is soil quality. Did you know that the quality of soil or that your home is built on can actually impact you also. So we're going to discuss why and how this can impact you and the importance of this whole quality around your space.

And for Folklore Friday we're going to get into the goddess of the silkworm. Gingying Chi is emitted as wind rises as clouds, descends as rain and then seems back into the ground. This is the storage place of Xing Chi. So Xing Chi is what is called life generating Chi. And soil quality plays this crucial role in Feng Shui as it's a storage place of what is called this life generating Chi.

And of course it's often overlooked. The quality of your soil and the property can affect the flow of energy and Chi like I just talked about which is the very aspect, the very nature of what we want to accomplish with Feng Shui. You know it's to gather the Chi and harness it you know bring it into our homes. The soil quality can determine the health and vitality of both the plants and trees in our space you know the vegetation around us and in our home. So it's such an element to creating a hermoteous environment.

So poor quality soil can actually lead to a host of other problems which can create stagnant energy and negatively impact the overall energy flow of your home. So it is important to pay attention to the soil quality of the property and I'll talk about it to take measures to improve it. So let's get into soil quality. I'm going to start off reading from the book Feng Shui for Homebuyer's exterior edition by Joey Yap. So everything's going to be linked in the show.

I had a lot of resources for this episode so I'm going to check it out. So soil quality does fall on under the assessment of what is called land form of Feng Shui. So land form Feng Shui is literally about assessing your external environment. Your external environment I cannot speak today. Your external environment is a large portion of your Feng Shui.

It's said to govern up to like 70% of your Feng Shui. So I don't know how they came up with these numbers but it is said if you have really good land form exterior to your home that you won't have to do a lot of things like add Feng Shui cures and fix things because the Feng Shui that's coming and gathered into your home is pretty lucky. It's pretty auspicious. And again soil quality falls under this category. So it does say here to make a quick use of classical land form Feng Shui without having a full and comprehensive understanding of what is called the entering earth eye classics which I look for online by the way I can find a central ancient text on land form Feng Shui is to observe soil colors by looking at the soil color.

You can determine what mountains are influencing the land. So the trade secret of many top Feng Shui masters is to check the soil quality to determine the quality of the land. It is important to remember also he kind of addresses this here it says when you're checking the soil like if you really want to make a soil assessment you're going to want to dig down about two feet because as we know you know landscape person gardeners will put on that top soil to kind of improve or help the plants grow a little bit. So first step dig down about two feet. And according to the eye property.com there is another article that was written by Joey Yang with the about soil quality.

I'm a link in of course to a really great article actually. It says here just by digging if you feed into the ground the color and quality of the earth below the top soil will tell you much about the chi of the land. And it says here you know just just before we even consider the color it says if the soil is soft and low me it is a positive indication that your land is good and filled with the positive chi. But on the other hand if you see like a bunch of rocks and pebbles it does tell the positive chi doesn't circulate very well on this space. On the topic of rocky soil it says here that you may find in addition to the color of the soil the quality of the soil is also important.

So if you have the right color soil but the soil is rocky then it has a lot of like rocks or boulders in it like like robot right there's two issues he says to consider and one of them is of course the expense to remove all these rocks and boulders to actually make the space livable you know especially if you're buying a piece of land. And secondly he says that the land becomes rocky due to wind exposure and when you have strong winds of course the chi is first because what is the saying in funcishway? The chi is dispersed by the wind and gathers at the boundaries of water so it says here the chi is dispersed by the wind you know and so it's not being gathered on this property and it does say here that you should make several visits at different points of the month maybe especially when we're having you know like the strong gusty winds in the spring in the fall because that means that the chi or the energy just doesn't gather very well you're probably dispersed too easily. Finally soil colors here it does state that one of the best signs you can see is greenish color soil so it says the soil indicates that the it is governed by the wood element so the wood element is strong in this area. This is that wood chi is conducted for prolonging life maintaining good health and as identified as being supportive for those who seek to elevate their status and raise reputation as such professions would require a reputation such as like a writer or celebrity would benefit from this type of chi maybe if your influence are right as wood is also symbolic of growth these influenced by the element are likely to become more sentimental and benevolent in nature so that sounds good to me.

One thing you have to look for when you're looking at greenish soil though is going to actually make sure you don't have drainage problems so make sure that these soils aren't these colors because there's an issue with them generally like I mean I'll kind of notice that I get a little bit of like moss or mold on top of my my soil sometimes so again to kind of digging down and you want to make sure that it's not like on that top surface and you're you know digging and the dirt is naturally just a little bit green. A yellowish soil is associated with the element of earth and represents stability and wealth generation these are types of lands that are supportive to banking industry and businessmen in general. I want to think you want to look for if you have yellowish or yellow brown soil is to make sure that there's good drainage and the dirt is not compacted down too much. Soil that is a pale white color is usually associated with the element of metal and it does say here such quality is suited for politicians, leaders, or people in the military as this element represents power and authority. I would say police officers to here or somebody in law enforcement.

A land associated with wood, earth, and metal are usually the most sought after and they are classified in feng shui as superior land due to benevolent influence on those who resided them and so it does state that here in the book it says you want to actually have the soil that's associated with the three again with the green, yellow, and white soil so you kind of see a mixture sometimes of the soil. I did I've heard this before and I really tried to find another article I swear I saw somebody in one of the feng shui forums like on Facebook on one of the groups talk about the different colored soil or like the tri-color soil. I could not find that I could not find that post so if I do I'll link it in the notes but it is said again if you have a soil with these three colors in it. Ooh excellent feng shui. Soil which is associated with water is black so this element is not only linked to intelligence but also movement and leisurely pleasure so such lands commonly associated with tourist sites in some cases those who stay in them tend to travel away to seek opportunity elsewhere as the water element is also related to instability and I to this I kind of tend to think of like lava rock and Hawaii right a lot of people travel there and yeah a lot of people also move away.

So reddish or purple land is associated with the element of fire although I've never seen purple I'm assuming it can totally be a thing. It says here due to its association with passion such land is not conductive to domestic occupation as it would influence the residents to become overbearing normally this best sort of usage for the fire element land is for religious or spiritual establishments and you know this really makes me think of like areas like Sedona that are said to be energy vortexes. Hmm really makes you think right? So now that you've maybe assessed your soil and you're like hmm you know thinking you got you thinking right what kind of soil do you have in your land you know what can you do now if you're thinking I'm having you're like you know I don't have great quality soil. So you're in the same boat as me it's really okay.

So we can do things to improve the quality soil around our space and thus harness and gather a little bit better Chi you know even though it doesn't fix everything perfectly I mean it's better know what is right. So looking at the book not the book I'm looking at the website here functuary.net there is article called climate change and the Chi connection by master gale smith who is super intelligent by the way. She does kind of address the fact that climate change does change our soil quality and it says here you know carbon dioxide monitors show that during the spring months peeking around May when our atmosphere is at its highest CO2 levels this actually coincides with the practice of tilling and stripping land in the northern hemisphere so it's time where vast sections of the planet are late bear of vegetation and it is the practice of removing vegetation that is getting the blame for turning at least 20 cradles of civilizations from lush to sandy environments which is actually pretty sad. This is here scientists have now surmised that farm tillion deforestation around castles over time turned thick and fertile soil into very sandy soil and I think that really is the issue here especially with my soil because I have a home that was built on a former cotton field and so we're big harvesters of cotton here in this part of of Texas and we have this nice flat sandy soil which is perfect conditions for cotton to grow and so my home was actually a built outside the city limits it was a former cotton field and you can tell this land has been stripped and used up so again just kind of the stripping of this is what what really can mess you up and so that kind of brings me forward to my first point of planting cover crops so one thing you can do to improve the soil is to actually plant a cover crop I think the biggest thing that comes to mind when I think about cover crops is the solution to the dust bull so if you live here in the United States and you know you've been in school at all you'll know that during the Great Depression we have a luck of also having something called the dust bull and so this was also due to over farming and over stripping the land and leaving us with just like bare very dusty dry land that was unusable and one of the solutions for this was actually to the government actually planted 220 million trees to stop the soil from blowing on what are called the Great Plains so just that kind of the cover crop it helped to reduce the soil erosion and keep moisture in the soil so again kind of going to things like conservation and planting the cover crops cover crops actually do help to prevent soil erosion a kind of recent example of this that I can think of is locally we have a seasonal corn maze that's open during the fall season which it's literally amazed made out of corn and kind of a little plan words it's made out of maze in AISEE so just kind of a little plan words there but you know you go pick your pumpkins and you go through the corn maze right that type of situation go take a little hay ride really fun so last year they actually didn't get enough rain in the springtime and their crop was doing extremely poorly and so they actually didn't plant the corn maze they actually planted they actually planted a different type of cover crop they used less water and you know they kind of stated that corn was just so a need so much water and we were just kind of facing a little bit of a drought last year they did plant a multi species cover crop that grew things like sorghum millet and ochre and radishes and it did actually in turn help these soil quality also so yeah just kind of an example of how you can improve it so cover crops are in addition to being used for slowing erosion down it does improve the soil health it improves the way the plants absorb water kind of breaks down that soil air rates a little bit and encourages things like worms to come in it also helps smother out weeds control pests and can increase the biodiversity in the area so if you are thinking about you know what could you kind of plant as a cover crop even to replace your grass if you even want it to just look locally at what grows best in your area so another thing you can do to improve the quality of your soil is make living soil so if you think about after it rains right or if you've had a heavy rain and you have mushrooms pop up in your yard that means you have a really good quality soil you might not not think about that right or if you dig down and you find like a lot of earthworms that means you have a good quality soil you have what is called alive or living soil and so going back to the quote from the beginning of the the episode in the intro the the quote was to bury is to store and ride on Xing Qi and Ying Ying Qi is emitted as wind rises clouds distanced as rain and seems back into the ground and is the storage place of Xing Qi so again going back to the functuary.net which I quoted all this from it says Xing Qi is growth or life Qi and it is a force that rises from the soil as a vapor it protected from scattering it rises to the clouds and returns as regenerative rain if the process is not met the opposite of Xing Qi is created and a Sha Qi is actually created so Sha Qi is supposed to be like killing or attacking negative energy right so Sha Qi makes life more difficult and normally result in poverty and relocation of people so to grow and prosper we do need Xing Qi. She states here that it was not until the 19th century that scientists even considered soil as a living entity that was nearly 2000 years after Gua Poo's textbook on soil profiling was even written and so they knew for some time that just one handful of soil contains more living organisms than our people on the planet instead it took the transforming of nearly 20% of earth soil becoming fragmented and infertile before they even took notice.

I'm not going to talk too much about the way you make living soil or a live soil but just know that it can be done if you wanted to I mean there's a million articles online to go watch some videos probably one of the easiest ways is to just do you know compost because that is naturally breaking down and creating. I think if it kind of like your stomach right you need those probiotics and your stomach to make a healthy gut bacteria. Same thing with soil you're going to need healthy bacteria to make a healthy soil so just think of it that way and if you are interested just kind of do a little research and make a nice healthy soil for your little plant friends. I think it is important to note that even if we have the not so great soil quality it is very possible to regenerate the soil and make it a place that's hospitable to our you know our living conditions right. It does say here from the same article the good news is that loshing chi and lush vegetation can be restored soil generation is still possible even when the ground is baked hard or is loose as sand and the lowest plateau is one successful story of regeneration.

It's just here for thousands of years supply to support it lush agriculture but tilling and deforestation turned the lush area into dust and by the second millennia this plateau was the most eroded and poverty struck in places in the planet with just 10% of vegetated cover. China called in experts worldwide after studying the situation and putting in many years of hard work they've restored this plateau back to its lush landscape. I won't say it right it's L-O-E-S-Los. Lewis this resulted in millions of people being lifted out of poverty and family members who left work to support their families could actually return back to the area. Many such projects are going on worldwide and it does say too bad it took 2000 years for soil scientists to accept soil as a living entity when the information was already available and it does say here too bad they hadn't studied a Feng Shui which yeah I agree.

So if you're one that says like I don't care about my lawn and I just do the bare minimum on it so I get that too right. There's a couple things you can do also which is planting some low maintenance decorative grasses that are kind of native to your area and those who will usually take off and spread by themselves pretty easily. Another thing is you can just let nature take over. You can let nature take over you're just forget about mowing see what grows there done right as long as you're not going to get like a fine from your HOA or from the city right you kind of let nature take over take its course and that will actually improve the soil quality also. So you might want to do this in a section of your yard you know or another thing is you can just throw a bunch of butterfly mix out you don't have to till the soil a lot it grows by itself low maintenance and you are again providing to the environment you're given the fireman a little of there.

From whispringbooks.com the goddess of the silkworm a Chinese folktale. Home tea was the emperor of China he had a beautiful wife whose name was Sealing the emperor and his beloved wife loved their people and they always thought of their happiness. In those days the Chinese people were closed made of skins but by and by animals grew scarce and the people did not know what they should wear. The emperor and the emperor's tried and vain to find some other way of clothing them. One morning, Hong tea and his wife were in the beautiful palace gardens.

They walked up and down, up and down talking to their people. Suddenly the emperor said look at the worms in a mulberry tree Sealing. They seemed to be spinning Sealing looked insured enough the worms were spinning along a thread was coming from the mouth of each and each little worm was winding the thread around its body. The next morning Hong tea and the emperor's walk through the trees again they found some worms still winding thread. Others had already spun their cocoons and others were fast asleep and a few days all the worms had spun cocoons.

This is indeed a wonderful wonderful thing Sealing why each worm has a thread on its body long enough to make a house for itself. Sealing thought about this day after day and one morning as she and the emperor walked under the tree she said I believe I can find a way to weave those long threads into cloth. But how would you unwind the thread as the emperor? I'll find a way Sealing said and she did. She had to try many many times.

She put the cocoons in a hot place and the little sleeper soon died. Then the cocoons were thrown in a boiling water to make soft thread. After that the long threads could be easily unwound. Now Sealing had to think of something else. She had to find a way to weave the thread into cloth and after many trials she made a loom.

The first that was ever made. She taught others to weave and soon hundreds of people were making cloth from the threads of silkworms. The people ever afterwards called Sealing the Goddess of the Silkworm and whenever the emperor walked with her in the garden they'd like to watch the silkworm spinning threads for the good of their people. The tale of the silkworm goddess does correspond with the eight solar cycle called small sprout in which the, this is the time of Europe where the silkworms actually start to hatch. So they do observe this I suppose in different areas of the the world.

It says here they do celebrate the birth of the silkworm goddess whose birthday actually also happened to be on this small sprout time. So given that the majority of the women would make a living not to mention dress themselves and their families by weaving silk the silkworm was considered a creature ordained from heaven. In some regions silk realers would also visit temples to pay their tribute to the silkworm goddess and usually this would occur in the forerfrute liquor and the type of snacks made from a flower that resembles a cocoon. So don't forget to check the link in the show notes for all the info and sources on the show that I referenced today and of course if you need to get in contact with me ask me questions or if you'd like that free energy mapping please visit that link tree and all the links are in there also. For free energy mapping of your floor plan please check the link in the show notes.

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