School for Scoundrels
No police force in the world has the power to stop people from preying upon our gullibility. Your only defense is a little skepticism, especially when the evidence is beyond belief.
—Dean Edell, M.D.
Thanks to a reader, FSUR found the site of the Nine Harmonies School of Feng Shui. It is easy to see why this site is a winner of a coveted Bad Feng Shui Award.
Carol Bridges wrote a book (The Medicine Woman’s Guide to Being in Business for Yourself) about remodeling yourself as a New Age entrepreneur (read: huckster) that forms the basis of her attempts at feng shui — a wacky plan of action that includes the "essence of feng shui without having to concern yourself with the Chinese bagua" (how convenient!) so your house can sing "the song of your soul."
Bridges also penned notable works about channeling Native Americans (making her one of the plastic medicine people that the First Peoples deplore), and created a Tarot deck along with a personal transformation guidebook (with “22 major mysteries of life” and “52 lessons of the Four Powers”).
Anyone can remodel their job, give birth to their career, generate ideas and take command (of other people’s money). After you read about the Nine Harmonies School you may want to enlist in the scam (or warn others away).
| What She Says | Reality Check |
|---|---|
| You will learn how to sense energies, dowse chi flow and feel the effect of colors. |
If you have spent any time reading FSUR you already know this is bogus information, a complete fraud. Humans cannot "sense energies" any more than they can see infrared. You also know that dowsing is an old Eurowest tradition (making "dowse chi flow" another oxymoron for my list of favorites). How can one "feel the effect of colors"? Colors are not always a feature of the natural world, they are something that human eyes and brains have developed! For all her training in psychology — otherwise used to good effect in cozening clients — Bridges is not prepared for the physical truth. |
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An explanation of feng shui What if you could compel the power which moves the oceans and lights up the sun … |
Sound interesting? You can find it as part of Prospero’s powers in "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare. It’s magical thinking in the finest Eurowest tradition. |
| Taken to it’s [sic!] deepest level, feng shui creates external environments to enhance the journey of the soul. |
And yet, part of your training with Bridges is to dance under the sky and "code" the Five Elements "into your life process" and move the bagua "into your body." So what you are taught is not what Bridges says is feng shui. |
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If your life lacks in one of the many Black Sect concepts, she says, you might benefit from a feng shui adjustment. This can be as simple and fun as rearranging your furniture or as big as moving to a new house. |
Black Sect practitioners like to say "When the feng shui practitioner comes, be prepared to move" as a canon of traditional practice — yet the only people who say this are all Black Sect practitioners. |
| …the life force, called chi [sic!], is the bearer of all blessings … |
This runs counter to any Chinese teachings, especially because there is sheng qi and sha qi. No one who knows how bad sha qi can be would ever say that it bears blessings. The babble that this woman passes off as high-concept feng shui is the stuff of 19th-century Spiritualism. |
| …it could be that the "wealth" corner of your home is piled with unused goods, thus causing obstruction in the flow of chi. | Or it could be that we invent other manifestations of sympathetic magic to bring in the business, and create a need where one previously did not exist. |
| It does not matter if you believe feng shui to be superstition … At worst, you will have engaged in a playful entertainment. |
The truth is, You are paying for entertainment, not for an education or for a feng shui analysis. Neither is likely to be reasonably priced; Bridges says clients are "happy to pay … well" for the experience. And as she wrote the book on her brand of entrepreneurship, you can bank on it. |
