(Ebook) The Imperial Guide to Feng-Shui & Chinese Astrology: The Only Authentic Translation from the Original Chinese by Thomas F. Aylward ISBN 9781842931769, 1842931768

(Ebook) The Imperial Guide to Feng-Shui & Chinese Astrology: The Only Authentic Translation from the Original Chinese by Thomas F. Aylward ISBN 9781842931769, 1842931768

In the third century BCE, the Chinese state adopted the Art of Scheduling and Positioning as Imperial orthodoxy. From then until its collapse in 1911, the court continuously employed professional diviners and sanctioned official texts about their art. The reason was simple: the Chinese believed that the universe communicated its assessment of the Emperor’s performance through astral and terrestrial portents—portents that only masters in the Art of Scheduling and Positioning could interpret.

Today, feng shui (the art of positioning) and Chinese astrology (the science of auspicious scheduling) have captured the popular imagination, but in the process those classical disciplines have been diluted sometimes beyond recognition. Now an accomplished scholar of Chinese language;, literature, and philosophy restores them in this remarkable volume, the first and only authentic translation of the original Chinese treatise on the Art of Scheduling and Positioning.

Intellectually accurate and true to the original work, yet written to be accessible to the general reader as well as the specialist, the Imperial Guide:

• reveals the organic connection between feng shui and astrology—a link overlooked by most other books on these two arts


• illuminates the most complex aspects of feng shui and astrology theory in accessible language and lucid imagery


• introduces essential concepts of Chinese cosmology: yin and yang, the five processes, the ten heavenly stems, the twelve earthly branches, the twenty-four seasonal nodes, and the sixty-four hexagrams


• explains how these symbols relate to the whole of traditional Chinese thought — and what they mean for the modern world

Thomas F. Aylward holds a BA and MA in Chinese language and culture and has studied Chinese in mainland China and Taiwan. He specializes in researching and translating classical Chinese texts on Chinese astrology, feng shui, Daoism, and Buddhism. He lives in Hanoi.