A question I’m asked from time to time is whether the feng shui bagua can be applied to cars. Some feng shui books say it can, but I don’t agree.
The reason is that the bagua is designed to be used for buildings, which stay in one place, not for objects such as cars that move around. It can certainly be used for a residential caravan that is usually parked in one place because this is essentially a home (align the bagua to the front door of the caravan), but as soon as you start moving a vehicle around, its relationship to land energies changes to being more fluid, and the bagua no longer applies.
However, depending on how much it is driven, an energy connection does develop between a car and its owner, and it’s possible to tell a lot about a person by the type of vehicle they drive and the condition it is in. In the same way that a person’s home is a metaphor for their life, this can also be extended to their car.
A vehicle that’s knee-deep in clutter, for example, speaks of a person whose emotions are stagnant and blocked, and whose self-esteem is low. But the metaphor can be extended well beyond the realms of clutter. If you have a problem with your car battery going flat, it’s likely that you’ve run yourself down to the point of exhaustion. If your car headlamps or windscreen wipers need repairing, you may need to get clearer vision about where you are going in your life. If your brakes become faulty, are you out of control? If your radiator overheats, are your emotions boiling over? If your petrol tank leaks, where in your life is your energy leaking away? And so on. If you repair your car without changing your life, the same thing will tend to break down again.
Where the feng shui bagua does come in useful is when you use it to see where in your home or on your plot of land your garage is located, and which aspect of your life is therefore connected to this.
If you don’t have a garage then a good feng shui tip is to make sure you don’t park your car so that it blocks the entrance to your home because this also blocks the flow of energy coming into your life.
And finally, there is the classic Chinese feng shui principle that cars represent predatory tigers so should always be parked facing away from a building, not towards it. I agree with this, but for entirely different reasons. Firstly, because parking this way symbolically represents being ready and willing to engage life rather than having your back turned to it; and secondly, because it is much more welcoming for visitors to see the ‘face’ of a car than a view of its bum!
Copyright © Karen Kingston 2013