Mao’s Well-Kept Open Secret: Feng Shui of Power

In the history of China, feng shui has been very much alive then and now since the first Emperor!

It is the Jesuits, and later the other fraternal order of missionaries, who went in and out of China that brought feng shui knowledge to Europe and its consequential spread worldwide via migration and colonization.

And within China itself throughout its colorful history, any ascendant to the throne from the dynastic eras to the present Communist Party politburo is influenced by its age-old beliefs and practices. Indeed, there is a so-called Feng Shui of Power!

Many a president or premier in the East or a king were mandated by their feng shui features – for example, an auspicious face, pair of ears, gait, or bearing like a lizard or reptilian in many an instance. Others by DNA or heredity feng shui in dynastic fashion as the lay of the land owned by ruling families or the gravesites of former rulers of countries rub on and level up to their heirs and descendants, thereby their sons or grandchildren also rise to power and become emperors, so to speak.

In the Philippines, the Ilocos home and burial site of a late president was so good, rounded by a small town river that it gave rise to an “emperor.”  It even augurs and beckons a future successor to the throne feng shui wise, provided the body of the dead subject is not transferred!

Before we digress any further, what was the feng shui to power of the Great Helmsman, Mao Tse Tung of Red China?

Let me share with you the ascent to parallel career power of a fellow Red Archer La Sallian activist who in the early 90s came to my office in a department store in Quiapo, Manila, to ask me about feng shui:

Is it true that Mao used feng shui? After my replying in the affirmative, he submitted himself to a feng shui consultation the aftereffects of which will be urban legend in local banking history. From credit clerk, rising to bank treasurer, later president, erstwhile now vice chairman.  It even came to a point that he requested that his feng shui be lessened as he was dubbed as the “emperor” of a bank then where he was treasurer!

For purposes of confidentiality, we shall keep his identity anonymous.

For a dialectically and materially philosophizing activist turned capitalist, his story reflectively affirms my reply to him decades ago on his query about Mao and feng shui. Back then the adjunct reply would bare the secret of grabbing power in the politics of a country.

And what is that?  Mao instructed his guerillas to destroy the grave of Chiang’s mother, the basis of his adversary’s good feng shui and claim to power in the China they knew back then! It went to much success that, fearing to be the victim of his own success feng shui wise, Mao wisely banned feng shui upon his ascent to the throne!

But resilient as the Chinese people are, underground then and now overtly again we see the resurgence of feng shui in China. There was even a downtrodden economic year of earthquakes and disaster that the Chinese people blamed their woes on the bad feng shui fates of their leader back then who was a Rat person afflicted by the Lunar Year of the Horse!

So there, power trippers, power brokers of any colors or persuasion, use feng shui only for the common good – be it in times of peace and prosperity or rebellion and revolution, depending on the realpolitik of the times and its objective conditions, historically and materially more importantly, let alone objectively!

So be it… and the Presidential Security Group may guard any grave they should for the moment!  Learn from the lessons of Mao, the Great Helmsman.