20th January 2005
The year turns; So what else is new?; Feng Shui books…
Feng Shui Diaries
Dai Hohn : Great Cold
Solar fortnight beginning
Thursday Jan 20th 2005 07.09
Hour Day Month Year
earth wood fire wood
muw gap ding yute
shun shun chow yuw
dragon dragon ox rooster
The Year Turns.
This is the year of the wood Rooster, conflicted like 2004: less violent, more stubborn. Who knows exactly what it holds? As I write, my son is in a Krakow knee deep in luminaries there for Holocaust Remembrance today. Putin and Straw and Cheney plan useful noises about the end of genocide without any obvious awareness that genocide follows the idea that people are different and lesser because they believe or behave differently.
Roosters are distinctive in the Chinese Zodiac in that they don’t even get on with each other. A Rooster year is not a great year for Roosters (birth years: 1993, 1981, 1969, 1957, 1945). Orthodox advice is to wear a Dragon bracelet or pendant as the Dragon has a good working relationship with the Rooster. Note however that the year animal is not the defining feature of a ba zi.
Meanwhile Bono and Bill Gates are addressing world hunger as the year chi summarised in my 2005 Predictions indicated they might. Watch for powerful women joining them. Which is when things will move. Late April I expect.
In the pond, the goldfish have woken up. They stirred early in January as the first full month of the solar year began. There’s no fooling them. Most of us need almanacs and stuff but they just know. At the same time several of the prayer plants in the green house died because they were just that tad too wet when the temperature dipped. This is the time of Great Cold. If it’s going to be cold, it’ll be now.
In December my working day was seriously shortened by the chi. I had to start at 7am and end around 3pm as I can’t do yang feng shui (for the living) after dark. The woo-woo stuff intervenes. But in January there is enough light to stretch the day. And the quality of the light is so different, so fresh and so crisp. And when the sun does go down it is so dim.
So What Else is New?
- An SOS from a lady in a block of flats that’s full of restless stuff. Hands coming through the wall, semi-clad mediaeval youths, that sort of thing. She has been keeping this as well as the rest of the world out of the flat and her life for decades. Now in order to get her back into the world we are dealing with both. This will involve help from my friend Anna, the medium.
- A lady with a whole brood of remarkable, complex and accident-prone children. She wants to keep them remarkable but reduce the accidents. You change, they change, I said. As we talk, we deal with the familiar distinction between blame and responsibility. Everyone is innocent. No one is to blame. We are all responsible. This can sound very abstract.
- A famous actress rings to ask me for a walkround. Her very distinctive ba zi adds to the growing evidence that fame is quite easy to predict. She is, as it turns out, sweet and very down to earth and with just the same sorts of problems and confusions as everyone else. The best spot in her house for spiritual practice is full of shoes.
“You sit here with your Jimmy Choos and meditate,” I suggest. She laughs and notes down the advice.
- I have to approve a company logo. Centrally what’s required is identifying the colour of money. Your day stem – your day of birth – tells me what element money is for you. A business card wants to feature this and have it supported by any other colour used.
- Two of my clients await approval to adopt this week. I’ve done my stuff. Anybody taking a moment out to wish them well will shorten the odds. I advise them to sit in the tai chi and feel. If we will feel now what is up for us to feel, there is no need for us to create a reality in which we appear to have no other choice.
- A client lives yards from millions of gallons of water. Generally water is a blessing. But so much is quite daunting. There is a Laburnum bush very much past its best in the back garden, exactly where a Buddha is needed to hold in the chi. I advise lopping it. I don’t often do that. Life is precious, even laburnum bushes.
- Another house, another Laburnum tree: this one where a proposed healing room needs to go. These bushes are poisonous. I advise them (clients, not bushes) to have a word with it, leave a crystal in a crook and let it know it’s in the way.
- I advise a lady that a house is sound to purchase: healthy, wealthy and happy for sure. I am able to tell her upfront from her ba zi that her husband is somewhat older. I have been puzzled that a move did not look on before 2007; this is solved when I arrive to find she is already renting the property in question.
- Another house facing ding (just off due South). My informal study of this orientation receives some more data. Usually there is fame and competition. The guy is featured in a poster campaign. You don’t make any money that way. We must fine tune to eliminate the competition and make the fame more productive. Another slightly restless cellar: so many are. Just a little fizz in the energy; it feels like dizziness. No real problem
Feng Shui Books
His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman.
I’m sort of joking but not much. Pullman represents chi as dust. Dust is largely flakes of discarded skin and hair and all the little items of dna that we slough off day to day. It’s very personal. Naturally more of mine comes through my door than anyone else’s. This does not explain the living nature of chi but it’s a pretty good illustration.
And to help explain how chi is held in a building or garden, dust is a really useful analogy. A hedge needs to be compact enough to hold dust. If you ensure your hedges are this dense your garden will be brighter and richer than your neighbour’s.
Pullman’s heroine Lyra has a dial she calls the alethiometer clearly based on a Chinese compass or lo pan. And Pullman shows that it is not what the dial indicates that matters but the level on which it is interpreted. When my lo pan shows yin wood it can mean healing, thoroughness, eldest daughter, light green, spring, early morning, rabbits, a thousand other related ideas or a combination. I have to know which.
Pullman also connects up Lyra’s magic with the Book of Changes which is at the heart of feng shui and indeed of pretty much all ancient Chinese culture. It’s a good story too.
Next time: Who knows?
Best wishes,
Richard Ashworth
Richard was featured in Channel Five’s Housebusters during 2005.