Auspicious Dates and Places for the month of the Metal Dragon 2025
the (3rd) month of the Metal Dragon 2025.
(20:52 4th April to 14:11 5th May inclusive)
in the Year of the Wood Snake.
Public Edition
A 9 month is about visibility.
A Dragon Month can be a cat among the pigeons/bull in a china shop.
Where not to be this month: South, North, East
Where to be this month: tai chi, North West
Favoured Animals: Monkey, Rat, Rooster
Especially challenged: Dog, Rabbit, Dragon.
The Hexagram: 11 Tai Peace, Earth over Heaven, Peace.
I am teaching and practising Ba Zi all the time My next book I Talk to the Animals cover (detail above) by the wonderful Ellie Spinelli, due out October 2025 from O Books, is a comprehensive guide to the drafting, interpretation and practice of Ba Zi. You can pester your book shop for it now (preferably a real live book shop and absolutely please not Amazon). As I say I’m teaching this stuff one-to-one via Zoom all the time. Meanwhile there is another extract from my book after next Love made Visible at the end of this bulletin. We don’t yet have a publisher so any constructive comment you might have about it may be helpful. Hope you like it.
Some days in any month suit certain Animals better than others and some activities more than others. Some suit nobody and the notes below offer advance warning. To get most value you need to compare each of the Animals in the Four Pillars of your ba zi against the portents of the day. Remember that you have at least four Animals to consider in your own Ba Zi chart (one each relating to Hour, Day and Month of birth as well as Year – see below) and that it is as unlikely that they’re all suffering during the Dragon Month as that all are making hay. Each Animal illuminates a particular aspect of life. To know this about yourself may be timely. My Annual Animal Fortunes are now on the website. More detail in the Podcast.
Your Year Animal will tend to relate to parents, family and origins as well as the physical, the obvious and the immediate, the family you grew up with and/or hereditary traits and patterns; deep history, deep heritage & your public face. The Year Animal does a lot of heavy lifting, often the first to be affected by outside events.
Your Month Animal relates to career or business as well as education, peers, siblings, exes and the work environment; shallower history, shallower heritage.
Your Day Animal represents you personally and your significant other. You may need a Chinese Calendar or professional advice (you have my email) to establish your Day Animal.
Your Hour Animal represents your deepest dreams, your children and the future. Which for many of us are pretty much the same thing.
Your Life House represents the voice that calls to you. It may be summoning you to your true calling but it may be no such thing. Which is a decision you have to make for yourself.
Dragon people like Dragon times can be both magical and chaotic. Some Dragons – I speak as one – may not like to own both aspects. Anyway this Dragon Month as ever marks April the month of showers, Easter and the tax year. The power of the Dragon is the cleansing that follows the storm: the shake up leading to transformation. For all of us this may be a good time to consider what in our lives needs shaking up. Might not be easy for Dragons themselves (born 1952, 1964, 1978, 1990, 2002, April (the approx 29 days from about the 5th) between 7&9 in the morning and on days you’d have to ask me to look up) who suffer the “self clash”, that is to say that Dragon times challenge Dragons – in particular their egos which may be tested during April. The way through is not likely to be introspection.
Dragon in the Dragon Month That’s what it’s like to be the agent of change. You may be short of funds but you aren’t likely to be short of friends. This is the month to trade on the influence of those in power who see your worth. There are special Qi Men Dun Jia orientations and times that may make up for the opposition you may feel. In this year of proxy conflict pick no fights because you’re likely to be confronting the innocent.
The Snake finds her teacher at such times. Best stay alert. Instruction may entail discipline, that is kun, order, challenge and healthy opposition; that which as Nietszche wrote, does not kill you makes you strong. This month at least. Don’t undertake new tasks without proper instruction.
Horses may be impatient for the full-on Fire of their own Month (ie June). But in this year of revelation and (often unwanted) attention you’d be best advised to be discreet especially if you’re going to misbehave. Anything in relationship is legitimate by mutual agreement (see Hexagram 60 last month) but that much is required.
Sheep may be feeling a bit lost again following the supportive Wood of last month’s Rabbit. Those doors will re-open, you may be disappointed but don’t get mean. As Oscar Wilde wrote “a soul in rebellion can not receive grace.” Patience; question short cuts to influence.
For Monkeys Snake years are a playground and you’re likely to find Dragon months especially constructive – mostly late at night and on Rat days (13th, 25th). You can advance in a big way if you prepare well and stick to the facts.
Roosters of course are Metal too and usually in cahoots with the Snake but for them the issue is concentration. Keep your eye on the ball. Not everything is for show. Dance like the whole world is watching.
Dogs move fast when they move (notice the suddenness of Fire Dog Donald Trump’s recent er… adjustments) but they’re likely to be sitting things out a bit for now, knowing on some level that both of the subsequent Horse and Sheep Months will spur them into further action. Be prepared for opposition and/or separation in July.
Pig: directly opposed by the Snake all year and now possibly mystified by the Dragon energy. Overlooked last month and with unexpected breaks in their schedule, this month won’t turn out a lot different. Be very honest about what you do and don’t know.
Rat loves Dragon because between them they get stuff done. This is a nose to the grindstone month. Don’t expect a great deal of leisure. Enlist Monkeys too and make hay on Monkey Days (19th, 21st April, 3rd May). It’s all about teamwork.
Ox and Dragon are technically a break up. Value what’s valuable. Where you expect loss, focus, make choices and act appropriately. A slim down is likely either way. Be ready.
Mustn’t forget the Tiger who is under fresh pressure right now. Stick to your guns if you can. Your best bet is to be unselfish, unattached and philosophical. Right behaviour takes you up another rung. Be aware of the green-eyed monster.
Rabbits may be lucky in love as well as at cards this month, but don’t push either. Lucky or fleeced you won’t be lonely. Good time for a break away to prepare for the big breaks due in the Snake Month.
Hope that’s everybody!
8 4 6
7 9 2
3 5 1
As ever my monthly Yi Jing (that is Book of Changes) class (next one: Wednesday April 9th) examines the ramifications of the Hexagram of the Month: this time Tai, Hexagram 11, Peace (above) which is about co-operation and joining. The Trigrams Earth and Heaven are reckoned to mingle on their respective journeys down and upwards. Earth, the Receptive is full yin and Heaven that is the Creative, is full yang. This is a time when the world will be changed by those who work together. Gender co-operation is top priority.
Highlights of these sessions appear on my YouTube Channel later in each month. You may not have the stamina for all sixty four Hexagrams but you can join us live via Zoom for a year via Sheilaashworthfengshui@gmail.com
In this month’s Podcast which should be out about the same time as this bulletin, I discuss with the brilliant Zoe Vita James the changing qi of the Month, its likely implications for each Animal and what we may each do about it.
In this month’s Bonus Podcast, in pursuit of perfect Feng Shui we take a close look at interiors, what’s helpful, what’s not and what you might do about it. How readily does your front door open?
From now the bonus podcasts will concentrate upon hints, tips and principles of Classical Feng Shui. You’ll find both at https://open.spotify.com/show/2BvGN1qGP5HdF56HCl9y64.
Days
Not so helpful
Rabbit favours domestic activity while Wall speaks of the safety and comfort of home. Closed completes that picture. Work at home, don’t stick your neck out on this morbid day. Best used for identifying obstacles which may be more easily moved on the 18th.
Special Caution: Dragon, Rooster cool your heels for now.
Fears allayed, best foot forward. Wood Rat is the ground breaker. Take time to receive the genius ideas afloat today – before someone else does. Best day this month for placing Water and other enhancements.
Activity: briefly at the Horse (due South) will stir things up if needed.
Favours: Monkey, Rat, Dragon, Ox.
Not so helpful
Neck: transgressions catch up. Balance: favours outliers, the desperate. Power is shared more widely than usual but it’s a double-edged sword. Examine all propositions carefully. Activity: as little as possible.
Provocative talk may move things along – in a good way. Good day to begin things. Favours most constructive activity especially display.
Activity: South East for awareness of what’s attracting attention.
Favours: all especially Snakes, Oxen, Dragons, the discreet.
LocationsNot so helpful
North East, Beginnings & Endings: 5 Month Star: 3 Fortune Virtue (Tiger) Year Wu huang
The 5 has no stake so a visit from the fidgetty 3 could prove explosive in this the most delicate area of the year. Best kept low, dim and quiet throughout. If you must be here, tiptoe. Some advocate a salt water cure – if that tempts you I can send you instructions. It’s messy though, mind. Worst place for the Eldest Son this month.
A t’ang lung may mitigate but it’s almost always better to leave things alone than to trust cures.
Helpful
South, Bright Future: Year Star: 6 Month Star: 4 Sun (Horse S2) 6 represents power and authority; 4 invention, curiosity, new frontiers
Power failure. Intra-family stress and rebellion. Controversial intentions may come to light. Whatever you do here, make it defensible because whatever it is, is going to come out. The good news is that such communication can solve anything.
Pacify add a little Water (one manifestation of which is simply deep communication).
Note: Directions are from the tai chi (ie heart of the property)
Richard Ashworth©
www.imperialfengshui.info © 2025
art by @elliespinelli ©
The following is an extract from my book after next Love made Visible.
Dora the Explorer (from Love Made Visible)
“They tell you happiness is an achievable ambition.”
Granola Suicide, Consumerist Healthcare from Skipping Breakfast.
Dora used to be an on-line psychic. She has hung up her crystal ball now but back in the day she was a hotline to the world of shadows. She has been my client a long time. She’s no longer young but she’s still as sharp as a Stanley knife when she chooses to be.
She lives in Shropshire. So I’m on my way to her today by way of the IQ test that is Birmingham New Street. The station is like a hall of mirrors, glass walls preventing anyone without a helicopter moving from platform to platform. I notice a coffee shop claiming their brews are “temperature profiled”. Good to know of course but even if I still drank coffee, it’s tantalisingly out of reach: I find myself nose up against a glass barrier like the cover of David Bowie’s “Lodger”. I imagine this is how a rat feels in a maze. I have ten minutes to change trains. I just make it. A rat might do it quicker.
The first time Dora called me in was because she was plagued by disembodied spirits. Occupational hazard, I guess. Restless entities and unbalanced energy were her stock in trade. But it was getting uncomfortable. Could I move them out of the house? Well of course; a little mumbo jumbo and Bob’s your uncle. No more spooks.
Two weeks later she called to complain that business was very slow.
That’s Dora.
Early in our acquaintance we established that her marriage had not been a success.
“He wasn’t kind to me,” she told me, paused a moment and sniffed. Then she shook her head, made some tea and offered me a toasted teacake.
Her ba zi suggested her husband had been both unreliable and deceitful. Mo yuk over loy hong in the Day Pillar of her ba zi, if you understand these things. She’s been alone since she kicked him out. At first she seemed such a sad and bitter old thing but I tinkered with the house over time and made her laugh once or twice and things settled.
Frankly that wasn’t a great house, set halfway up a windswept incline, overlooking strip-mined hills. There are many such settlements along the Welsh Borders: three or four terraced Nessa-and-Stacey streets between summits limp with straggly grass and loose pebbles, the Dragon seed – loong mai – long exhausted.
Technically Dora belongs to what is called the East Group. This means she’s best suited to a house that backs onto South, North, East or South East. That house apart from anything else backed onto the North East, so it wasn’t much help. I gave her some guidance as to what to look for next: level ground, height behind, lesser height either side, open space in front and so on.
“And for you, it should face South 3.”
“It should face South?”
“Yes, but a few degrees clockwise of due South.”
“That’s South West.”
“No it’s ding, South 3, the most Westerly of the Mountains of the South. Imagine a compass broken up into twenty-four equal sections. Like a Trivial Pursuit board.”
She screws up her face.
“That’s not easy.”
I draw her a circle showing the twenty-four sections.
“There you are, each compass point covers three sections or “Mountains””.
She frowns.
“So South consists of South 1 (just anticlockwise of due South) due South (that is South 2) and South 3, just clockwise of due South. That’s the direction you want to face. South 3”.
“That’s South West.”
So she moved. To this nightmare of a home. Needless to say she didn’t run it past me before she purchased. Spoiling the ship, as they say, for a ha’pence of tar. Two years on I’m down here to assess it.
She is as you may have gleaned, headstrong and er…parsimonious. And this second house (which actually faces North East) is even worse than the last one, it may actually be the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s on flat lifeless ground, plagued with maggots and stroppy neighbours. There are high windows next door which overlook her bedroom – technically Peeping Tom Qi – and a catalogue of more subtle flaws.
“What’s wrong with it?” she asks me for at least the fifth time. She winces at the pain from recent orthodontistry which itself followed a hip operation. It wouldn’t take clairvoyance to suspect there’s a health issue here. She often appears aggressive which I put down to her various ailments. And to loneliness.
“I’m sleeping in the direction you told me to,” she complains.
“I guess that’s not enough,” I say.
We sit outside in the sun, batting away horse-flies, looking at the lifeless flat land stretching a dozen miles beyond her back garden. The rear of the house wants the support of height. No help there. Or anywhere near.
Historically the feng shui man’s task was to place the house appropriately in the landscape. But these days of course most of my job is compensating for houses that are all wrong: a Water fountain here, a wind chime there and I can make most places habitable. Not this one. As the man said, If I were you I wouldn’t start from here.
She agrees to look for another.
“South 3,” I remind her. “Ding is the Chinese name. Between 187½˚ and 202½˚South, slightly West of South.”
And if it faces South of course, the walls will be oriented East, West, North and South. This will mean not only that the house suits her but that there are three supportive walls to put her bed against.
On the way back she calls again.
“I’ve found one. Can you tell me whether it’s any good from there?”
I juggle my shoulder bag and take-away tea and anchor my phone under my chin.
“If you give me enough information.”
She emails me the agents’ details. The crucial compass orientation is unclear. I’m on a Cross-Country train now consisting of four carriages holding six carriages worth of people. An indulgent ticket-inspector overlooks the fact that I’m in First Class with a 2nd–class ticket. “Up the RMT,” I say as he walks on.
I examine the details and, phone signal alternately surging and flatlining, I look on Google maps. The broadband on these cattle trucks is as helpful as a steamroller in Venice.
“Could be facing South or South West,” I tell Dora. “I can only be sure onsite.”
“I’ll measure it,” she says. She knows I will charge her half a day if I have to come down to the Marches. Doesn’t want that.
“Fine. You have a box compass?”
“What do you mean?”
“A compass with a square edge.”
“I’ll get one.”
She rings again. I coach her through a compass reading.
“It’s South West,” she says firmly.
“What’s the compass reading?”
“West of South. That’s South West,” she says defiantly.
“The actual number.”
“192 degrees.”
“That’s South 3. The front will be North 3 ie 12 degrees North.”
“Is that what I want?”
There’s more; the house faces open ground. There’s height behind and a little to either side and the rooms are apportioned nicely.
“I can’t be sure without looking at it onsite but from what you’ve told me it’s pretty much perfect.”
“I’ll go and check.”
Next day I fly to Dublin, one of my favourite cities. But not when it’s raining. I walk from my hotel to the residential area south of the city where I’m going to be working. The gutters are literally flooded – five or six inches of water on the pavement. My client is in a bad way, depressed, anxious and in physical pain and suddenly my wet foot doesn’t seem so important. I rarely make promises but she called because she’s read my book, the Feng Shui Diaries and thinks I may be able to help her.
The house is quite tricky, especially this year but there are decent flying stars – that is pockets of energy – to work with. And she’s very stuck. But there’s a magical moment when we talk about her past and how the house relates to it and we can both begin to see the way through.
“Seen through the prism of the tao, everything is for learning and everything in our life is chosen.”
“Hmm,” she says quizzically but I think I’ve rung a bell.
“Which means that pretty much anything we’ve chosen – pain, stuckness, frustration, misfortune – can be unchosen. On one level all feng shui is simply a mechanism for re-choosing. That’s the upside, the downside is that we often have to own some pretty poor decisions.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“And almost nothing’s fixed in stone.”
She’s going to need more; I outline the he tu journeys round the house and identify spots to work and rest. She’s so restless, every now and then she returns to a computer game on her phone. And she’s not sleeping well. So I address that.
“People aren’t woken by thoughts but by feelings. We are feeling creatures. If you wake in the night, sit up in bed and take two deep breaths. And feel whatever’s there. Make no attempt to heal it or make it better, to understand it or work it out. Just breathe.”
Now I’m walking back with my wheelie and shoulder bag. It’s raining hard. I’m on the Air Coach route back to the airport and I stop at a bus shelter. They’re every half hour and there’s one due now but my outstretched arm is not assertive enough to get the driver’s attention. Another half hour to wait. And I’m quite wet. I can see my reflection in the glass over the bus time table; I’m overdue for a haircut and in this state I look like a bedraggled Balkan dictator.
So I stumble into a coffee shop (Insomnia – not such a great name for a chain of coffee shops) and drip dry. No temperature profiling as far as I can see. Maybe the technology hasn’t made it to Ballsbridge. Anyway I’m drinking tea. My phone goes. Dora.
“I’ve measured it.”
“And?”
“192 degrees.”
“Brilliant. Well done.”
“That’s South West.”
Richard Ashworth©
www.imperialfengshui.info
Richard Ashworth is one of the most respected Western Feng Shui Masters. A good taster of his approach may be found on Audible . You can also see him at work on tv’s Housebusters Most Thursdays and Fridays he is to be found teaching both feng shui and ba zi one-to-one online (times by mutual arrangement) with students from Seattle to Belgium.
Richard has worked from Lebanon to Bermuda, in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and with stars such as Naomie Harris, Kelly Hoppen and Gillian Anderson. Unusually for a Western Master, he has addressed the Grand Masters at the International Feng Shui Conference in Singapore.
Every month we send (at a modest fee) retainer clients a more comprehensive monthly bulletin than this one, covering in detail right places to be (and when) as well as the most helpful days Animal by Animal and much more from the Chinese calendar.
Subscriptions (and further info): Sheilaashworthfengshui@gmail.com
Richard Ashworth©
www.imperialfengshui.info © 2025
art by @elliespinelli ©