Life
Yang Yunsong is remembered as a late-Tang official who left the capital and taught landscape siting in Jiangxi; folk tradition nicknamed him 'Mister Rescue-from-Poverty'. Works attributed to him—notably the Hanlong jing (Classic of Shaking Dragons) and Yilong jing (Classic of Doubting Dragons)—describe how to read mountain 'dragons', water courses and the 'lair' (xue) where qi gathers. They became core texts of the Form (luan tou) school, contrasted with compass-based Approach (li qi) methods. As with many fengshui classics, authorship and dating are debated; ORDL treats the corpus as a medieval tradition under his name.
The system
- Form School: reading mountains, waters and the xue (lair).
- Dragon veins: continuous ridges as channels of terrain qi.
- Contrast with Liqi (compass) methods of later fengshui.
Key works
- Hanlong jing (Classic of Shaking Dragons, attributed)
- Yilong jing (Classic of Doubting Dragons, attributed)
Where to start
- Read a modern history of fengshui schools first, then sample Form School chapters with a critical eye on attribution.
Ask Orin
A question to start with. It opens in Orin ready to edit; nothing is sent until you press Send.
How does Yang Yunsong's Form School differ from compass-based Liqi fengshui?Ask Orin this question