Saturday May 6th 2006 00.11
Lap Ha – Summer Begins
Richard Ashworth
Feng Shui Diaries
Solar fortnight beginning:
Saturday May 6th 2006 00.11
Hour Day Month Year
fire wood water fire
bing yi gui bing
tze wei si xu
rat sheep snake dog
Month: gui si the Water Snake.
Solar Fortnight: Lap Ha Summer Begins
The Water Snake
The Water Snake is sometimes called the Snake in the Grass. A contrary serpent, like those born in its year (1953) it is quite hard to read. A Water Snake month will be both magical and explosive. Not great for Pigs and Rats though they may reap hidden benefits and wooden Dragons (1964) may find themselves surprisingly buoyed up. This is otherwise quite a challenging year for them. The wooden Dogs of 1994 (who may so far have felt shortchanged by what was apparently their year) will buck up too. These Dogs above all need to seize the moment. All too soon they’ll be attending 8am SATS classes and cramming for GCSE’s. Education is of course a much wider thing than book-learning. Meanwhile their counterparts, the wood Dogs of 1934, may experience something of the clocks being turned back. They may receive a burst of energy; a power surge, if you like, rather than a hot flush. I’d be very interested in feedback from either of these Dogs.
Having said all this, your year animal is derived from your ba zi or personal feng shui and the totality of the ba zi may and often does say something quite different. We all retain choice and no divination is ever more powerful than that.
This month’s Flying Stars which relate to the energies within the house, show doubled-up chi. That is to say broadly, that bad areas are worse and good areas better. South East, South and West are trickier and North, North West and SouthWest even more favoured. Expressed as members of the family, this implies challenges for the Eldest, Second and Third Daughters. And although the word challenge has been hijacked by the business world to mean pratfall, I mean exactly what I say. This type of challenge often leads to real progress but you can’t fall asleep. It is what in feng shui, we call a clash and as one feng shui master said to me: “Nothing happens without a clash.” It may not be comfortable but there is energy there. Determined action will bring results.
The Grannies for Peace in the USA may be an example of this. These old girls are deliberately seeking conflict in order to bring their grandsons home from Iraq. Good on ‘em. As I suggested in my Year Predictions, this US administation like its UK counterpart will find itself under extreme and sudden pressure if it does not pay attention to the popular groundswell. The first peak of this comes at the Summer Solstice. When I write next this will not be far away.
More conventional support is available for the Second Son, Father and Mother. The Second Son, kam the Abyss, is often the trailblazer, so this is unfamiliar territory for him. A bit too easy.
Again the actual configuration of your house will exaggerate or reduce these influences. And again all such prognostication is at heart a choice. Email for clarification if I have confused you again.
Calendars, Past Lives.
The month opens shortly after midnight; a dark start. As the Chinese work in double hours, the Rat hour straddles the actual witching hour of midnight, starting at 11pm and finishing at 1am. Conventions differ but I generally treat any day as beginning with the Rat hour. No ambiguity this month as the opening minute is in the 6th May whichever way we reckon it. You may like me, need to pause to absorb that. Tricky stuff time. 6,000 years of tinkering has made it a very complex subject indeed.
As an example, when the Julian Calendar gave way to the Gregorian in 1752 there was an outcry. “Give us back our eleven days, “ people said. There were riots and questions asked in the house. This is not as silly as it sounds. The calendar jumped from the 1st to the 12th of September to compensate for the difference that had arisen between the two calendars. We had been out of step with mainland Europe for nearly two hundred years – or was that the other way round? – and something had to give. But salaried workers (this was the dawn of the industrial revolution) found that they owed a month’s rent out of a little over two week’s wages.
In China at this time the Qianlong Emperor was in his 18th year of power: the water Monkey by the Hsia reckoning.. He was you will recall, the ruler who rebuffed Lord McCartney’s trade mission on the grounds that he could not see that China needed all that European tut. Hu Jintao appears to have said something similar to George Bush last week but they are at least working from the same calendar.
A ba zi sometimes shows unfinished work at birth. Sometimes the Chinese characters show unusual sequences. A reasonable interpretation is that stuff has not been completed from the last incarnation. We have to deal with this with a light touch, of course. It doesn’t actually much matter whether we believe in literal past lives or see them simply as helpful metaphors. Either way they are instructive. But it is also arresting how many people were more eminent in their past lives than now.
1752, as it happens, was the year of the poet Thomas Chatterton’s birth. Chatterton, the “Marvellous Boy” who wrote peerless facsimiles of mediaeval verse, committed suicide shortly before his 18th birthday after his verses had been revealed as not being as he had represented them, the work of the mediaeval monk Old Rowley. In other words he killed himself in shame at being outed as a genius rather than a trainspotter. Curious.
Back when I was younger, more romantic and generally more impressed with myself, I speculated that Chatterton had been born exactly 200 years before me. This seemed Significant. I was 30 before I realised that this was impossible as I had been born in the first fortnight of September 1952.
Of Tea and Parachutes
Tea at Fortnums with Lena, a beatiful Korean painter. My feng shui survey last year forced her out of her studio and away from the Northern Light that is the prerequisite of the European tradition of painting. This focused the fact that her whole identity was in question. She has been very ill but her medication is now starting to make a difference which it was not six months ago and there are other positive signs. She is very brave but I am glad she seems to be drawing her courage much less from her boots now.
I unsettle Lena by recommending she emerges from her metaphysical shell and comes back into the world. This will take courage – which she certainly has but had not expected to need in this way. We eat coffee-walnut cake. She sips a sensible herbal infusion and I, English Breakfast tea.
Talking of beautiful brave women, Kathleen Turner is across the room from us.
There comes a time I remind Lena, when we have looked within enough for the time being. This is yin and yang. Introspection can become addictive. We fear to be in the outer (sometimes called “real”) world in case we lose our grip on our inner life. She tells me that her prayer* has become more solid. She had wrestled with this; for some time calling out without feeling heard. This is now different. But she fears the shock of moving her attention from in to out.
I liken it to a parachute jump. I tell her that I myself have this useful ability to not see inevitable danger until it is upon me. I call it a gift although others have called it stupidity. The point is that to float gently downwards under your parachute, you have to first jump clear of the plane unsupported. Her step may feel like this.
“Step forward, “ I say “And the parachute opens.”
Her house is a perverse facing-North aiming-South one like several I have reported on recently; a pushme –pull you house which has been turned around with water..
*Ecumenical Note: For prayer read calling on spirit, accessing higher mind or whatever floats your boat.
Animation
Joey, my 11-year-old son and I visited the Pixar exhibition at the Science Museum this week. He always likes the gadgets.
The Pixar exhibit features original artwork, the artists talking, some short films, and a 21st century zoetrope which is one of those magic lantern things with slits strobed-up to show an amazing sequence featuring characters from Toy Story II. There are also a series of what are called colour scripts. I had never come across these things before. A colour script is a very rough guide to the movie – like a storyboard – which is vague in every aspect except colour. So you see blurry prototypes of Woody & Buzz and the monsters in Monsters Inc acting out parts of what will become the film. The mood of each sequence is clear because of the colours. Which is what they are for.
This is feng shui in action. Change the colour, change the mood; whether it’s a house, an outfit or a cartoon. I wonder if they know that?
Feedback is encouraged including that you never want to hear from me again if that happens to be the case.
Richard Ashworth
Richardashworthfengshui@hotmail.com
Names have been changed to protect ..uh…me