Feng shui, fortune

Andrew Kwan was born into the world of Chinese mysticism – his grandfather, from whom he learned his craft, was a fortune-teller at a temple and a Taoist.

“Other religions take the stance that spirits or ghosts should not exist, hence they banish or destroy them,” Kwan says. “I practise the Luk Yam branch of Taoism, which takes a gentler approach. We deal with them and try our best to mediate the situation before taking any drastic measures.”

This version of exorcism is borrowed from the Mao Shan branch of Taoism, Kwan explains.

Luk Yam and Mao Shan are the two branches that mainly deal with spirits and ghosts in Hong Kong – and while “Mao Shan takes a more aggressive approach, Luk Yam is a lot calmer”, Kwan says.

According to Kwan, signs of a haunting can include disturbances with electronics and appliances, such as the lights randomly turning off, the toilet flushing by itself, and toys or a television switching on at night.

“I’ve had a client whose [foreign domestic] helper was hearing voices and feeling watched. When they called me, I found out it was an old Chinese gentleman who couldn’t move on; he was asking her for help,” he says.

“We performed a ritual to help the spirit move on to the next realm. The helper said one night, when she closed her eyes she saw the old man smile. He thanked her and said goodbye.”

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Asked why he chose a discipline that deals with the ethereal plane when studying feng shui – Chinese geomancy – Kwan explains that it was actually part of the job.

“When I started practising feng shui, I visited a lot of residences. Many people would complain about certain parts of their homes that were giving them a bad feeling or something a lot more disturbing. If it was a presence, I had to know how to deal with it.”

Like any discipline, practitioners have different skill levels and specialities.

“I had a client who was in a bit of a pickle – he was a creative who needed to travel to Thailand a lot. On one trip, he went to a massage parlour where the masseuse asked him to help with massaging another male client, because there was a rule at the parlour that female masseuses cannot work on clients of the opposite sex,” he says.

“When he returned to Hong Kong, he felt unwell but doctors could not give him a diagnosis. He [started] sloughing off skin, and asked me for help. I found that he was transferred a curse in Thailand – that was a tough nut to crack because the curse was strong.”

After the curse was lifted, his client’s skin healed but he still felt ill. Kwan says that he was haunted by a jilted lover from a previous life.

“Compared to the old man who wanted to move on, this presence was very stubborn. We could only ask the client to recite some prayers every day to cleanse her presence. After a period of time, it worked.”

“I don’t think the old man had anything in common with the helper he was haunting in the practical sense, but we cannot think of the ethereal realm like we do our reality,” Kwan says.

“A house might not mean a place, a person can be a connection. Sometimes it doesn’t take much at all for a spirit to be attracted to a person or a place, but it is a lot harder for them to haunt a person.”

How can Kwan tell if the problems that he deals with are mental health issues or a haunting? “I have students who are psychiatrists who say they can’t tell the difference,” says the feng shui master.

“Just like psychiatry, we are only going by what the client tells us and it’s our job to ease these concerns.

“By the time we usually get called, things have dragged on for a while and the client has tried a lot of conventional avenues. What does happen is that they’ve been troubled by the haunting for such a prolonged period of time, it does end up affecting their mental well-being.”