Are Hill Slope Facing Houses Bad?

Different Views of Apartments on a Hill Slope

Along with dead end houses, many feng shui masters say that houses that faces hill slopes are bad. But is this really so?

I recently read an interesting article written by a renowned geomancy group about houses that were built on a hill in the Bangsar area in Kuala Lumpur. It was professionally written and provided good insights into how the environment and fengshui helps to explain the fortunes of the houses (and people).

In brief, I remember the article stressed or implied two points.

The first is that dead end houses or houses at the end of cul-de-sacs are not good, fengshui wise. Since this has been a long held belief, it is not such a great statement.

The second is that houses with the front higher than the rear is also not good. This is another long held belief. Many knows this maxim although when asked why, they would likely shrug their shoulders.

My view is that this principle cannot be applied in a general way when we do feng shui look-see of contemporary buildings. Now, the weather elements are taken care of during the engineering stage. Design parameters like earthquake and wind are all factored in. Heat, light and air qualities are covered by environmental engineering.

This being so, is feng shui obsolete and cannot be used anymore?

1.            Bad because it contradicts the four mystical animals configuration?

The common reason given is that it is not in accordance with the four mystic animals configuration which dictates that the rear must always be higher. It has to have a rear guard so to speak. Both left and right must always provide shelter in the favored U-shape arrangement. Pick up any feng shui book and more often than not, this is the advice you will find. How common! But should we not look at this more closely?

The guarded configuration makes a lot of sense, certainly. In terms of shelter from the wind and sun and other natural forces, it is correct. In terms of protection against invaders, it makes good sense too as one needs only to take care of a frontal attack. This is seen from how the Athenians defeated the vastly superior Persian army at Marathon circa 500bc.

As a general principle, this is applicable to townships but loses much of its validity when it comes to individual buildings and abodes.

In most instances, where a property is cited as has possessing poor feng shui, it is not uncommon that closer examination will reveal there are other factors that contributed.

Some of the possibilities are that the orientation is inappropriate to the design as a whole, the floor plans are out of cord, internal spatial arrangements do not maximize the qi flow and so on.

The natal fortunes of the occupants cannot be discounted either. Feng Shui is but one spoke in the wheel of life. Customarily Feng Shui is placed last in the hierarchy of metaphysics that governs the life of man. The ratio of its importance, however, is a subjective matter.

2.            Bad because Feng Shui texts say so?

First thing first. Many recent commentators rely on what has been said bu another. After a while, something repeated over and over again tends to become fact, irrespective of whether it is really true. The underlying rationale too may have gone astray along the way.

Feng Shui texts do mention that facing a hill slope is not recommended. Many reasons are alluded to with mention of veins of qi and different combinations of water courses. They are very old writings on the subject but it is hard to really pin the reasons for such recommendations. Could the reasons be rebound of sound, emissions from the hill, moisture or throw back of wind, the list is open to speculation.

Since old texts are mentioned, let’s take a look. Not all hill facing houses (or tombs for that matter)are deemed bad. In the “Heaven Jade Classic” or TianYu Jing, the direction of northeast-southwest and east-west are the directions where dill facing is where qi collects. What this means is that for particular orientations, facing the hill slope is actually good.

3.            High Rise Apartments ?

A cursory check of apartments that are built into the hill side would reveal that there will be units on the lower levels which will be facing the hill side as well as those that will have clear “city” views. Going higher up, that is, in if the building rises high enough, the units that share the same arrangement as the units below would not be facing uphill as at that height, the building would have rose higher than the hill. Which floor you are on manifests different properties.

This is a possible scenario but what precisely this highlight is that the face-hill-thus-not-good maxim cannot be taken as an absolute maxim. There has to be and there are many other factors involved. There are many who live in such situations and there is no outright observation that they fare worse than any other layouts. On the contrary, there are many who go from strength to strength.

Thus….

It’s the basics that need to be closely examined. Generalizations and following the crowd may lead up a blind alley and has to be avoided.

Tagged as: Hill Slope Houses, House Feng Shui