Feng Shui Made Really Easy
Part XI: The Different Levels of Feng Shui:
The San He School
Master Joseph Yu
July 1999
Level 3: The San He School

If the Eight House School is a result of "Playing with the Trigrams", then the San He School is a result of "Playing with Stems and Branches". Many people erroneously identify the Eight House School as part of the San He School. This is far from the truth.

San He literally translates as Three Unities or Three Combinations.

The entire theory of the San He School is based on four sets of "Triangular Combinations" that exist within the Twelve Earthly Branches. San He is a direct reference to these four triangulations.

Notice that the Twelve Earthly Branches also correspond to the Twelve Animal Signs.

Animal Sign	Year Branch
Rat	Zi
Ox	Chou
Tiger	Yin
Rabbit	Mao
Dragon	Chen
Snake	Si
Horse	Wu
Goat	Wei
Monkey	Xin
Rooster	You
Dog	Xu
Pig	Hai

The four sets of combinations are known as Frames. These four Frames are:

San He	Element Frame
Rat, Dragon, and Monkey	= Water Frame
Rabbit, Goat, and Pig	= Wood Frame
Tiger, Horse, and Dog	= Fire Frame
Ox, Snake, and Rooster	= Metal Frame

The Twelve Earthly Branches also denote the twelve stages of life of the four elements. The twelve stages are:

[1] Birth
[2] Bathing
[3] Dressing up
[4] Adulthood
[5] Prime
[6] Declining
[7] Sick
[8] Dead
[9] Buried
[10] Vanishing
[11] Embryo
[12] Development

Adding the 8 Heavenly Stems (the 10 stems less Wu and Ji) and the 4 corner Trigrams (Qian, Gen, Xun and Kun which occupy respectively NW, NE, SE and SW) we get the 24 mountains. There are 6 Water Houses, 6 Fire Houses, 6 Wood Houses, and 6 Metal Houses. All placement of door, stove, master bedroom, beds, etc., must be chosen from the good stages. However, there are two sub-branches of the San He School. One branch uses the sitting to define the house. The other branch uses the facing to define the house. The results will be exactly opposite.

Later on other more complicated theories were developed. This includes the "Eight Devils Yellow Spring", the "Early Heaven and Later Heaven Water Method", the Tai Sui and San Sha, and a multitude of other hypotheses.

You can make it as complicated as you like or you can make it as simple as you like.

Master Jiang Da Hong was very bitter against this school of Feng Shui. Master Shen Zhu Reng in the Qing Dynasty diligently studied this school for many years before he decided to study the Flying Stars. He later stated that it was his greatest regret in life to have wasted so much time on this school which was proven useless.

Currently there is no organized book written to introduce the teaching of the San He school in a logical sequence. The reason is simply because such sequence does not exist.

Joseph Yu, © 1999, All Rights Reserved
[Editors Note: For further information Master Yu can be contacted at the Feng Shui Research Center website. Master Yu also offers the highest quality Feng Shui, Four Pillars, and Zi Wei Dou Shu Correspondence Courses, conducts International Seminars, moderates the Astro-Feng Shui on-line forum and private on-line forums for course students, and also offers various Feng Shui and Astrology services as outlined on his website.]