7th November 2004
…
Feng Shui Diaries
lap dung : Winter begins
Solar fortnight beginning
Sunday Nov 7th 2004 10.03
Hour Day Month Year
metal metal wood wood
sun gung yute gap
jee yan yuw shen
snake tiger rooster monkey
An easy heading to translate this one: lap beginning, dung winter. Just as well, my Classical Chinese being as slight as it is. And we now enter the month of the Rooster or perhaps it should be turkey as a couple of thousand miles away 290 million of them appear to have voted for Thanksgiving.
Still, life goes on. And as I have said before, we get the administrations we deserve.
The Rooster is yin metal or por kwan. Positively this is laughter, fun, and clear communication. Negatively it is endless argument. In 2005 this will be the ruling chi or tai sui.
This week I have been working along with the study group to which I belong, on predictions for next year. The starting point is the moment that the year changes or dung gee, set out as above. If you read this a particular way you can derive Hexagrams, elemental balance and much more. Which themselves yield symbols. The skill is to sort through and make sense of the huge number of symbols.
This ancient form of divination last year produced such results as:
Ø US troops to be re-engaged by September
Ø New trouble in the south of the old USSR
Ø George W Bush to be re-elected in a climate in which it is virtual treason to vote against him.
Ø By the late summer house prices may have levelled out in areas where recent booms have taken place.
Ø Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation to win at least one Oscar.
The earliest Chinese divination consisted of burning the shells of turtles and examining the holes in the distorted shell. The turtle was evicted before the divination began but nonetheless the Chinese river variety was actually driven to extinction. Which perhaps explains why they took to using also the shoulder bones of domestic animals. This is called scapulomancy from scapula, a shoulder bone. Some of the records of this method form the earliest text of the Book of Changes and of feng shui. The earliest document in feng shui – the ho tu river map is itself said to have been delivered by a turtle.
And today the rear of the house is still called the Turtle. This back boundary should be higher than the front and always kept secure.
Every year we aim to get our predictions more specific. I can say right away that I see England winning the Ashes in controversial circumstances. It’s possible a substantial number of you won’t consider that very important but it’s a lot more cheerful than some of the global developments that are already pretty clear. Our predictions will be available via my website before the New Year. I may even send them with that edition of the diary. As usual, if you don’t want them, let me know.
And let me continue to emphasise that we can always choose how we experience anything. And we are always able to choose from any situation an outcome which we might judge “good” as opposed to an outcome we might judge “bad.”
A client recently accused me of “malapropism.” I guess it’s these sorts of pronouncement that draw that sort of comment. Ho hum.
Also, this week a lady whose flat I had been engaged to get sold, accepted an offer on it. I had recommended in September that a huge and critically positioned mirror come down. The offer came less than a week after I finally moved it for her myself.
Why the mirror? Briefly – there was a lot more to it than this – the client’s ba zi or personal elemental balance showed that her father was a very powerful influence in her life. This of course is not unusual. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with it. But in this case there was a track record of dicing with danger in order to compete with him. The mirror was in the North West which is traditionally the area of the father so everything she did was metaphorically overseen by him. By removing the mirror we reduced the power of the competition.
So what’s wrong with a bit of healthy competition? Again, nothing, except that the extent to which we are doing things in order to make points is the extent to which we must fail. This idea (© Dr Chuck Spezzano) may by the way, seem radical. Don’t agree with me. Play with it a bit and see if it makes sense for you. And reject it with my blessing if it doesn’t.
In Celtic tradition at Halloween the worlds of flesh and spirit move close together. They are divided by the thinnest of veils through which there is two-way traffic. A birth here is a death there and vice-versa. At Chateau Ashworth we have experienced some heavy-duty family tragedy this fortnight. I’ll write something on the feng shui of it when it is a little less raw. Meanwhile, if you feel moved to it, do address a few words to whatever power floats your boat on behalf of my son and daughter-in-law.
I know it makes a difference.
Thank you.
Best wishes,
Richard Ashworth
Richard was featured in the July issue of Spirit & Destiny magazine and is still waiting for the transmission of the new series of Channel Five’s Housebusters in which he appears.