5th May 2005

Lap Ha: Summer begins; Rash advice; Adventures in the Zen trade…

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Lap Ha: SummerBegins

Solar fortnight beginning:

Thursday May 5^th 2005 18.23

Hour Day Month Year
water earth metal wood
quai gay sun yute
yuw chow jee yuw
rooster ox snake rooster

Lap Ha: SummerBegins

This month’s combination of stem (sun) and branch (jee the Snake) is the same as that for the year 2001. Like the years, the months recur in a cycle of 60 and this conjunction happens only every five years. It is worth some attention. This month we can expect “echoes” of the sorts of things that happened in 2001.

An example: I surveyed an office in 2003, a converted stable where there had been a major fire in 1883. As 1883 was exactly 120 years before, the year chi was the same: quai may, the water Sheep. During the intervening cycle, in the quai may year of 1943, at least two bombs had dropped within a few hundred yards, one destroying a gas main and burning down the surrounding houses. As serious conflagration had occurred in each of the preceding quai may years, you can imagine I took special precautions against fire.

What happened in your life in 2001? It is possible that this month may feel similar. Was there some event you would like to relive or some life lesson you didn’t quite pick up? A narrow window of opportunity might be opening.

Logically next month will recall 2002 and so on; until September when this year’s chi is doubled up by a wood Rooster month in a wood Rooster year. These cycles are at the heart of prediction.

Rash Advice

Some irritations and ailments appear seasonally. Many of us suffer short breath in summertime and certain skin complaints are more common around now. I have found that summer breathing complaints are often alleviated by facing West. If this is your bugbear try reorienting your bed so that you face West as you wake and sit up. The same principle applies to your desk except that generally you’ll be awake already.

Summer eczema can often be relieved by orienting away from the South.

Adventures in the Zen Trade

• Surveying Tamara’s house under refurbishment at vast expense. Coming into this halfway, I found myself second guessing the designer’s elaborate and beautiful plans. She was very gracious when I told her that the bath was plumbed securely into the wrong place. As was Tamara when denied the water feature planned for the South West which experience has shown me tends to coincide with a woman in emotional turmoil. We did not want this for her.

  
  

  • Talking with my friend Kasha who slashed her wrist trying to stop her front door slamming. The through draft from her back door was the culprit. My survey in February had identified the back door as nasty. Usually there is mumbo-jumbo to tame a door that is totally wrong. Not this one. It just needs re-hanging. I had also told her that her garden shed was all wrong. In the excitement her neighbours donated their nearly new one as it was being replaced. Which was nice.

    
    

    • Surrounding Tom’s house with crystals. Generally I look for ways to get water (the most common form of live chi) into a house. For a feng shui master the front door is water in and the back door water out. I aim to get it coming in in the right form and from the right quarter. Tom’s house with a riverbank in front was getting water every which way. Too much. So I set it up to come in and out only where I wanted it. The upshot should be that sickness which has been a factor should drop away and that Tom himself can more easily see the difference between the brilliant ideas that come to him constantly that will work and those that won’t.

    • God blamed Adam, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake.Lakshmi & I discussed the nature of responsibility. Her ba zi had revealed serious unpleasantness in her childhood, all,of which was consistent with the feng shui of her home. She was very brave and very honest and had done a good deal of work on herself but the blame remained.

      We can all sympathise with this, I think; often we confuse responsibility and blame. The fact is that we are all responsible and no one is to blame. We do not progress as long as we continue to see villains in our story.

      She blamed her mother for not protecting her. I pointed out that as soon as we blame someone other than the literal villain, the fatuity of all blame becomes clear. Because if her mum was to blame then so was the rest of her family and so was Lakshmi herself. Where do you draw the line?

      God blamed Adam, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. And the snake took the Nuremberg defence: I was only obeying orders. We all have a story. Some are really good ones. But when we move on when we realise everyone else has a good story too.

      You should hear mine.

      Oh and we did a lot of powerful feng shui that reflected this progress: moving beds, changing décor, carefully positioning a water feature and so on. Since my first visit in February many of her worries had dissolved.

      Finally I referred her to Chuck Spezzano’s wonderful definition of forgiveness which I couldn’t remember then (or indeed now) but will be found via Google on his Psychology of Vision website.

      True forgiveness brings energy and release but the pursuit can be so exhausting.