Anchors. A Feng Shui Diary from 2019.
Anchors.
A Feng Shui Diary from 2019.
“The Qi comes down from the Mountain on the Wind. Therefore preserve the Water and shelter from the Wind.” The Book of Odes.
Early February. I’m in the Midlands, sometimes called the Black Country, England’s industrial heart. It’s cold and the sky is gun-metal grey. I sometimes claim that it always rains in these parts. It’s not true but today is particularly dark, the light and warmth of spring still far away. As we pass through Dudley, Sarah points out a huge iron anchor almost in the road, right by a pub actually called “The Anchor”. Dudley was once anchor capital of the world. Not so many built here these days.
Last year Sarah took a hugely demanding job, commuted to a town she didn’t know and worked herself to exhaustion. Now she’s back I’m here to set up her home to pick up the fresh energy of this new Earth Pig year. It’s what we call a Tune-Up, my annual visit to bring the feng shui up to date for the new Chinese Year.
As I remind her, feng shui is a hybrid of procedures in accordance with rules not generally understood or respected this side of the world as well as something harder to pin down: it may be that something in a particular location within a house has a particular meaning, what feels different may be explained in many ways. During a Tune Up I aim to identify the changes the New Year has brought and suggest adjustments.
This last 12 months have been break-neck for her. Now she figures she needs to be still and to feel the pain she has been running from. “Girls Talk” by Dave Edmunds selects itself on her car radio as we arrive at her house. I wonder if there’s been less or more of that this last little while. Anything can be healed by communication but it’s not always obvious what to communicate or to whom.
Hers is a detached, 3-bed home with a door oriented North East: a pretty good set-up in the 8th Chinese Fate Period when it was constructed. The garden falls away to the rear where I have long since placed external Water to hold the qi – that is energy or perhaps life. And the floor plan is not quite regular.
The most unusual detail has always been a niche in an outside wall to the South East. It never made any sense, blocking access to the back garden and leaving a sharp corner jutting out. Sharp corners of course are details to address wherever they are, but this is the South East – the place of sisters. I always knew what it represented but not what to do about it. It was telling me something surely? She was after all the second of three sisters.
Today there is a small fountain awkwardly balanced on the offending wall, embellished with a sad little angel. It’s all a bit damp and icy and the pump has stopped.
“But then it is February,” I say. She raises her eyebrows and purses her lips.
Inside I track the new positions of what are called the “Flying Stars” or fei sin: the positions of qi (something like energy) dictated by a combination of the year and the house, some helpful, some not so much. As far as I can tell no Star is ever simply good or bad. How would it know? I make sure she’s facing in helpful directions both at rest and at work.
I show her this year’s He Tu Journeys.
Each year, each segment of the home houses different kinds of energy. I recommend daily journeys between the sectors. Each sector stands for many things – literally millions – including one for each member of the family. And so does each Star. There are usually four or five journeys to make. I teach the new pattern in my Forecast Day each December.
Journey number one for this Earth Pig Year is from the South to the tai chi, bringing the light of the South and the Second Sister to the heart of the home. Then there’s one from the South to the South East, Second Sister to Elder Sister. Essentially we are moving good energy to join less good. And we are on some level encouraging sisters to talk.
Since her younger sister died she has hardly been in the house, let alone the South East.
“Take these walks every morning,” I suggest. “Find the start location, breathe deeply into it and take that breath to the end location. More powerful if you say, take a tumblestone across the divide, but most powerful when you find your own meaning within it.”
“More a prayer than a charm?”
“Exactly. Sound feng shui but something more also.”
She has put together a nice healthy salad for lunch. It’s a cold day but it’s a good salad and as ever I chain-drink tea, so I’m warm enough. The coldness is not about temperature. We talk but it’s not an emotional conversation. There is so much hanging in the air.
Since her sister died she has “adopted” her niece, braved her brother-in-law’s bitterness and kept up with the rest of the family, travelling back and forth across the country to keep them all bonded, all the while nursing her own heartbreak. She’s a brave old thing.
Before I catch my train home – a rare direct connection to Guildford from the double-glazed rat trap that is Birmingham New Street (where there are security barriers keeping you back from the security barriers) – we sit for a couple of minutes in her car.
“Seems we have two choices with feelings we don’t like: distraction or immersion. And since distraction always leads to immersion, it seems to make sense to go there first. Gin & tonic, heroin, nicotine and soap operas, overwork, they all just delay the moment.”
“I know,” she says. “I’ve been making myself so busy. Anything rather than entering the grief. When I get home I haven’t wanted to do anything. Sleep and work, that’s it.”
The pain of a broken heart, I think, hangs like a weight until it’s owned. Feeling and not feeling while the mind is constantly trying to solve and explain and reassure. And the reassurance does not reassure. I tell her about my own younger sister who died all those years ago: pre-eclampsia in the seventh month of pregnancy at thirty two. We understand each other. Grief is appropriate, a mark of respect, it takes a lot to make a person and their web of connections. How can it all be gone in a moment?
“I didn’t know.”
“Why would you?”
She pauses. There is quiet.
“Just be sure to make those journeys.”
The link to Birmingham takes me through Dudley again. I think of her extended family. And how we are anchored together by love and blood and anchors like Sarah.
When I get on the train, the first track that comes on is “I don’t feel amazing” by the Guillemots: “Can’t stop those noises at the door.” She knows all that and as a Feng Shui Master I can confirm that there’s nothing wrong with her door.
As I said, Classical Feng Shui is made up of physical laws and something like intuition informed by symbols. Communication may be able to heal anything but sometimes it’s a slow process and sometimes listening carefully and moving stuff about may be the best thing to do.
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.
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Richard Ashworth©
www.imperialfengshui.info