(169) Feng shui to determine a power
By Janet Shin
There is a quite interesting story regarding how princes inherited power in Korea, from a viewpoint of feng shui. Traditionally, kings tried to have as many princes as possible through by having many concubines. As a result, unless a king was ill or died young, he would have many sons and daughters. This usually resulted in revolts among princes when to take over the throne.
Such conflicts were extremely violent during Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), leaving many stories regarding how royal families succeeded their power. Regarding this, fatalists often suggested an explanation through feng shui analysis.
In light of the current situation in North Korea, we can look back into the past to find explanation.
As the official heir of Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un was heralded as the “Great Successor” upon the sudden death of his father.
However, as he is the third son of the North Korean dictator, much attention has been on his other siblings.
Surprisingly, none of his two older brothers and younger sister, Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-chol and Kim Yo-jong, were officially confirmed to show up at the funeral.
According to “Gyeonggukdaejeon,” the grand code of state administration that dictated every law, acts, customs and ordinances of people of Joseon Kingdom, one must continue the paternal lineage by bequeathing the heritage to the eldest son; it indicates that the rightful successor to the throne is the eldest prince. However, in history, only the seven eldest princes ascended to the royal throne among the 26 successions during the kingdom.
Dating back to founder of the kingdom King Taejo, his first son opposed the regime, thus was not considered for the succession. This marked the first incident of selecting the most capable prince not the necessarily the eldest prince for the throne. Though this maybe the right practice that will result in a powerful regime, how come the eldest sons rarely became the successors?
King Taejong, the third king, tried to continue the tradition of the eldest son succession, but he himself dethroned his first son, Yang-nyeong and turned the throne over to the third son, Chung-nyeong, who became the great King Sejong.
It left many stories about how the elder princes behaved themselves. In order to stay away from political intrigues, they sometimes feigned to be mad or left the palace to be a monk.
In addition, many other eldest princes died young or they died without having a son to carry on the crown.
The tragedy continued throughout the kingdom. There were some records in the “Annals of the Joseon Kingdom” that caught our attention to analyze what happened in light of feng shui.
King Taejo, consulted Muhak, the court priest and a feng shui master, when he made important decisions in establishing the country. Muhak contributed greatly in deciding Hanyang, the old name of Seoul, to be a capital of Joseon. Hanyang was acknowledged to have good feng shui aspects, with mountains in north, east, west and south and the Cheonggyecheon stream flowing through the city. Mt. Bugaks in the north was great enough to protect the city from sharp wind and the Cheonggyecheon was beleived to make the city affluent.
However, there was a disagreement among the officials whether to build Gyeongbok Palace in the south or the east of the city. It was because some believed that n mountain, Mt. Nak in the east was not great enough to embrace the royal family compared Mt. Inwang in the west.
Taking east as the direction of the crown prince or the first son, it was a crucial decision to influence the history of royal family going forward. Muhak insisted make the palace face east in order to compensate weak energy of Mt. Nak, while the other respected official, Jeong Do-jeon, was against it and wanted the palace to face south. According to Muhak, by having the palace face east, the eldest sons would receive the energy from Mr. Bugak become more powerful. In the end, the palace was built to face south.
Since then, with the series of misfortunes of the crown princes, feng shui masters repeatedly proposed to improve feng shui of royal palaces and locate kings’ for the royal descendants. However the proposals were not always adopted.
Feng shui has been exploited to retain or to usurp power by many in history.
Coming back to present, this shadow is still casted on the Korean society, both North and South.
Info : Are you interested in learning more about the ancient Chinese teaching about the “Four Pillars of Destiny”? For further information, visit Janet’s website at www.fourpillarskorea.com and contact Janet at 010-5414-7461 or email janetshin@hotmail.com.
The writer is the president of the Heavenly Garden, a saju research center in Korea, and the author of “Learning Four Pillars”.