Flying Star Chart
A designer gave fengshui advice and taught how to use aquariums. However, he said he was unsure whether the aquarium should be placed in the “inauspicious” or the “auspicious” positions.
His arguments waffle along something like this:
Placing it in the auspicious position is recommended as the movement of the water, the fishes, the water and the pump will vitalize the auspicious area making it more powerful.
Placing the aquarium in the inauspicious areas will be making use of the principle of ‘splashing water into the ling hall’. What he seemed to mean is that the water and the other fengshui properties of the aquarium will turn the bad area become good.
My guess is that this designer is a very imaginative person but I will not agree that his imagination should be directed towards false-guessing feng shui principles. An aquarium in a bad position is never right if you go by the principle of ‘splashing water into the ling hall’. Never.
Feng shui principles are often interpreted in amazing ways. There is no way of telling, not by any substantial means, that any feng shui exercise is right. Only time and events are the visible indicators. By then it is often too late. The best thing to do to avoid this would be to apply feng shui only after having understood it well and certainly not applying imagination based on ill founded knowledge.
Perhaps we should take a look. The diagram you see at the top shows a chart of numbers. Popularly, it is called a flying star chart. Here it is a natal chart for a house constructed between the years 1984 to 2003. The main door of the house faces slightly off south.
The ideal position for the main door is at the middle of the body of the house. Often we are not so lucky. This is especially true for western architecture. (Ah, maybe architects and feng shui should consult each other before building starts but as the Bank of China shows this does not normally happens!) Through physical constraints or other, it amy not be possible to have the door in the middle. In situations like that, we can open the door to the left where the numbers 2 and 3 are.
This is called splashing water to the empty hall. Sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? But there are a few other things to check out.
Be warned that the route has to be from that door direct to the left as one enters the building. The path has to be distinct and the nature of the center must not be distracted. By distraction this means that its vital energy must not be disturbed. A spiral staircase or a high rack would do nicely to get this unwanted situation. You see now why spiral stair case were said to be bad but they may not know the real reason why 
Someone will tell you that the door is opened at a most inauspicious position. But not too much to worry as there are many positives that can be considered in the real feng shui. Here, I am illustrating a point not dispensing feng shui advice.
This splashing water technique is employed as an alternative and of course alternatives are never better than the first choice! Just like 14k gold can never be as real as real 24k gold but it is just as pretty.
In ending, please take care when using off-the-shelf feng shui advice. Check whether the principles are there. If there is any hint that the advice sounds strange or is reeled off subjectively, it is better not to follow. Maybe that is why they call it “messing around”. Ahem..we should not be too hilarious.
This book is a translation of a text by FengShui Master Jiang Da Hong (ca1640) with my explanations and comments. The root text is a section on yang dwellings from his book “5 Songs of the Heavenly Principles”.