Auspicious Dates and Places for the (2nd) month of the Earth Rabbit 2025

 

A 1 month                                       is about communication.
A Rabbit Month                             usually brings a domestic focus.
Where not to be this month:         South, South West
Where to be this month:               tai chi, South East (with caution)
Favoured Animals:                         Pig, Rabbit, Sheep, Dog, Snake
Especially challenged:                   Rooster, Dragon.
The Hexagram:                              60 Qien Restriction, Water over Lake, imposed barriers.

 The Lo Shu or Magic Square for the Earth Rabbit Month 2025

At the heart of this month’s lo shu (above) is the 1 of communication and emotion. Some insist that Water is money which doesn’t really stand up to examination. Jin % that is Gold, fits the facts better. Markets reflect moods, an optimistic market is an upwards one and vice-versa. Weather reflects moods too and it is a fact that pleasant sunshine and rising markets tend to coincide, as do plunging ones and miserable weather. Markets if you like, occupy a manic/depressive cycle: when we’re up, so are they. And vice-versa. Which is by way of saying that this emotional Rabbit month may prefigure upticks in May and June. Even if you’re uninterested in macro-finance, you’ll probably prefer optimism to pessimism.

 

My next book I Talk to the Animals cover (detail above) by the wonderful Ellie Spinelli, due out late-2025, is a comprehensive guide to the drafting, interpretation and practice of Ba Zi. You can pester your book shop for it in October (preferably a real live book shop and absolutely please not Amazon). Hidden away right at the end of this bulletin there’s a longish piece from my book-after-next Love Made Visible (no publication date yet) which I plan to preview bit by bit on my Substack page. Broadly it’s like The Feng Shui Diaries but covering the more recent miracles, meanderings, learnings, triumphs and embarrassments of a quarter century of feng shui practice. Meanwhile of course I’m teaching this stuff one-to-one via Zoom all the time.

  This Earth Rabbit Month – Winners and losers.

 

Rabbits like to stay home. This one is an Earth Rabbit that digs deeply for sustenance. Wood owes its life to the Earth. Without Earth no Wood, no plants, no trees, no grass, no wheat. The Water gives body to both and the Metal nutrients feed that new life and by now the return of the light has brought the Fire that draws the leaves and fruits out of the ground. In a Snake year this may happen early on. It’s a picky month with few really good dates (15^th, 28^th, 31^st) but many helpful to particular Animals. Traditionally Rabbit and Snake rub along. Rabbit’s Wood is a gentle push. So Rabbits can expect their in trays to fill this month but in a good way. Monkey days (28^th16^th) may prove tricky.

Dragons may find worthwhile company this month while the yin Wood stimulates their yang Earth. Gay males may find this agreeable although it is the nature of that relationship that Dragons of all genders may feel exploited while the Rabbit pretty literally makes hay. Best not to feed self-pity.

The Snake is in charge of course and the Rabbit is not a challenger. In this year of revelation, indiscretions will be coming to light regularly; minor ones now, the major ones await June, the month of the Horse.

In the mean time Horses may be finding themselves putting their houses in order as the Rabbit brings some sort of separation or break-up. This could be domestic, professional, social or other.

The average Sheep will have been finding her feet after 2025’s frenzy and the Rabbit Month brings opportunities for greater involvement in society. Pig days (19^th, 31^st) likely to be most welcoming for you. Some sort of ending is in view.

All year the mischief of the Monkey is by turns encouraged and shamed by the Snake. For now take special care on Tiger Days (10^th, 22^nd March, 3rd April.) This is a year when embarrassment is easily come by, however undeserved. Ask Vlodomyr Zelenskyy.

Roosters boosted by the Snake are a case in point: the direct opposition of the Rabbit may lead to mutual disappointment. If you are a Rooster in relationship with a Rabbit, take special care to keep your word. Again this may be relevant in number of contexts. And more public than you’d like. Though for Monkey men this may be the peak time for romance.

Dogs who will have entered the year running in one sense or another, accelerate in March. There is however greater and greater likelihood that you will make serious and public mistakes. It’s unlikely this will discourage you, though it should.

The Rabbit is fuelled by the yin Water of Pig so this month may be hard work. The Snake demands the best from you. Even when emotion you’d rather leave till later is upon you, don’t phone it in; there’s major breakthrough coming. And you are needed in a big way.

Rats can expect to carry the can for past errors. You may feel aggrieved. You may be innocent. But the instructions on the packet are to listen and learn. Only then can you usefully point out injustice.

Tigers are probably plotting rather than strutting. Smart move. Caution on Monkey (28^th, 16^th) and Snake (13^th, 25^th) days as ever when you may find yourself ina tight corner. Ox may simply be seeking peace and quiet. Make it brief. You’ll be busy by May when your deep sensitivity will be at a premium.

The Hexagram from the Book of Changes for the Earth Rabbit Month 2025

As ever my monthly Yi Jing (that is Book of Changes) class (next one: Wednesday March 12^th) examines the ramifications of the Hexagram of the Month: this time Qien, Hexagram 60, Restriction (above) which is about limitations imposed from above (unlike Hexagram 47 where the limitations are self-engendered)
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

Podcast: Feng Shui, the Real Thing

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? After March 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.

A Helpful Day
Friday 7^th March, Wood Pig, Neck, Success (9) *** mitigated progress.
Pig clashes the Snake Year Animal but is supported by the Month Rabbit. This (& Neck) confirms Success that can be marred by self sabotage. Advance with care for best outcomes.
Activity: at the tai chi for welcome attention.      
Favours: Rabbit, Sheep and Tiger, the resilient.
Caution: Pigs: let yourself be helped.

Not so much
Monday 10^th March, Earth Tiger, Heart, Closed (3) ***** Closing ranks Hexagram 40 Deliverance, covers the next five days. Out of the worst of dangers but not yet delivered. A Closed Heart won’t break down walls. Make room. No big change.
Activity: Face North East briefly for minimum resistance.
Favours: nobody much.
Caution: Monkey, Snake – insist on answers.

Another Helpful Day
Sunday 16^th March, Wood Monkey, Void, Initiate (9).
A chance to complete what remains incomplete and free up the next stage. May involve a blind step; in a world beyond control, the sanest kind. Traditionally affluence follows but quite long term.
Activity: South East to encourage cooperation.
Favours: Monkey, Rat, Dragon, Snake.

Selectively Helpful
Monday 17^th March, Wood Rooster, Danger, Destruction (1) *** fraught
When Rooster Day clashes Rabbit Month long distance travel may beckon; best stay put for now to avoid disappointment. Not for speculation or introspection which may scar.
Activity: South East may encourage further cooperation.
Special Caution: Dog, Rabbit stay out of scrapes.
Favours: Wood(1965) Fire(1977) Earth(1989) Snake; Water(1993) Wood(1945) Fire(1957) Metal(1981) Rooster, Fire(1997) Earth(2009) Ox, Fire(1976) Earth(1988) Metal(2000) Dragon.

Not so much
Saturday 22^nd March, Metal Tiger, Stomach, Closed (6) ***** Squeeze
Metal Tiger takes no prisoners. Today it may be wisest to let might be right. Deep consideration, slow movement and care with digestion and other uses of the tongue recommended.
Special Caution: Snakes and Monkeys on the move.
Favours: nobody much
Activity: at the Rabbit due East may simplify things.

Locations
Tai chi, Home, the centre: Year Star: 2 Month Star: 1
The eloquent 1 Star and the homely 2 generally don’t get on as their conjunction can bring unwelcome reflection or unnecessary solicitude. A little Metal may bridge that gap and encourage communication which entice things as diverse as technical help or invasion. But it’s all about the clean & deep communication that can move mountains.
Rules of clean communication:
1.Behave respectfully.
2.No exaggeration, distortion or omission.
3. Don’t milk unimportant grievance.
4.Stay put till complete. Nobody’s going anywhere.
To prosper: Add Metal. Gently. If the tai chi – that is geometric middle of your particular space is already loaded with Metal, just listen respectfully and closely.

Location to avoid
North East, Beginnings & Endings: 5 Month Star: 4 Fortune Virtue (Tiger) Year Wu huang
4 visits 5. Unfortunate for the ambitious or inquisitive woman this month but not much good for anybody. Probably best kept quiet and dark. Nonetheless there is power here. You might usefully face this way briefly but otherwise stay out if you can. Do not activate the Tiger unless you know it’s safe in your particular space at any given time.
Pacify with t’ang lung. All year.

Location to seek out
East, Ambition: Year Star: 9 Month: 8. Year san sha.
The 9 Star brings light, heat, passion and immediacy and magnifies whatever effects are already present: good if that’s good, not if not. As the East hosts the san sha however, these effects will tend to be be weak until high summer.
Boost: with Wood: rise early, locate South East near vegetation.

Richard Ashworth©
www.imperialfengshui.info
www.imperialfengshui.info © 2025
art by @elliespinelli ©

The Method. From Love Made Visible
“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, he can achieve”.
Napoleon Hill.

Taryn has three very smart children. She adores them and they adore her but they keep contracting weird illnesses and unlikely dramas. Her husband has bailed and money is tight and she pins me down to a deal that makes me choose between feeling saintly and feeling mugged. I go for saintly and shortly thereafter take the train to the coast where I learn among other things that Ho Chi Minh worked awhile on the Newhaven ferry. Who’d have known?

I apply some feng shui that is centuries old; very precise formulae employing classical principles. And over time they work. Which sounds satisfactory. But it kind of isn’t.

On the train back, I’m listening to Room to Roam by the Waterboys which was introduced to me by my friend Jack, one of many Neuro Linguistic Programmers I knew back in the 90’s who “processed” themselves night and day in pursuit of perfection. NLP is a method of getting rapidly to the heart of a skill; identifying as they say “the difference that makes the difference”.

These guys could speed read hardcore textbooks in minutes, speak multiple languages, leap tall buildings at a single bound, you get the picture. Tricks.  And the more powerful they became, the less they appeared to care, the less kind they were: dissociated supermen who could learn to fly a jet in a fortnight or climb the Matterhorn but who lost themselves in the process. Many became kind of empty. What they had in common was the belief that there was a technique to everything.

Jack was a brilliant man, a master of language patterns and body language. He was sweet-natured too. And like many brilliant people he lived on the edge.

“Rich. Ard,” he’d greet me in his shamelessly theatrical voice as if I were the most welcome person in the world, spliff in one hand, Chivas Regal in the other, line of coke on the glass coffee table. Usually I was working by the way, so I rarely partook. I was far from the only one he offered a line, his apartment was generally full of NLPers and his students and for a while Marisa his lovely Italian girlfriend to whom he was mostly faithful. He was a fun guy to be around. He’d read Scott Fitzgerald, knew Fearless by the Neville Brothers and had flirted with the taoist reality that considers there to be three realms: tian-ti-ren, the Heavenly, Earthly and the Human.

Heaven is the rules, the situation as we find it, Earth Qi is the mechanical means of change, Human Qi the realm of choice. Feng shui, along with TCM, acupuncture, tai chi and qi gong is at least in theory Earth Qi. It’s a linear rules-based response to a problem, in a sense no different to surgery, chemistry or thermo-dynamics. An orthodox Chinese Master would say that feng shui is in that sense a science. A method.

“But that’s no explanation, is it?” you might say.

Because there’s always something more. We strive for control but we are each of us – insofar as we means anything – spinning alone in darkness on an imaginary ball of mud. Method, as I explained to Taryn is only a platform. Don’t ask for it to be more.

It was Jack who introduced me to the work of Gurdjeff and Ouspensky and to Marianne Williamson who draws a distinction between “magical” and “miraculous” thinking. Magical thinking is the kind that summons a guardian angel to reserve a parking space. Seems to me it would be an early-closing day in Heaven when angels would care whether I was on double-yellows. But what do I know?

Miraculous thinking on the other hand, consists of owning two sorts of truth: firstly to own is the yin, Lunar, kinaesthetic process of simple feeling in which we commit to admitting whatever emotion, however uncomfortable is currently within us. For many this is a very difficult undertaking, the heart of it is careful breathing but it calls for an openness, a letting-go that is beyond technique. This is as fundamental to Feng Shui that works as accurate calculation.

As I write, as if by way of illustration, Billie Holiday’s “Don’t Explain” has come up on my shuffle:

“I hear folks chatter and I know you cheat;
Right or wrong don’t matter when you’re with me sweet.
Hush now don’t explain, you’re my joy and pain.”

Billie Holiday was a big favourite of Jack’s. That cracked voice acknowledging the joy and the agony of helpless love, needed no training as to the gap between the two. It is not technique that mends the broken heart.

The second type of owning Jack could do in his sleep: yang, Solar, visualisation, a clear rich image of what is wanted. His day job was teaching this stuff. And it’s what you’ll find in the business books: Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Richard Branson, Stephen Covey. Only Steve Jobs in the latter chapters of Isaacson’s biography, glimpses that he has missed the point when he apologises to his kids for preferring Apple to them. Read Osho on positive thinking perhaps if you want to explore this. Which Jack had. Obviously.

Taryn’s house is close to the sea. The sea is of course Water and sea Water is proverbially uncontrollable. Seaside towns, especially relatively small ones – Padstow, Totnes, Weymouth, Whitstable – so often have a Bohemian kind of energy. In these places you’ll often find artists, potters, musicians, sculptors and so on. For Bohemian, read bonkers perhaps.

Most Masters would say it’s the “first view” of the Water from Taryn’s house that counts, the door or window on the house’s perimeter that is closest to the Water. In this case the view falls to the South East which is the domain of the Eldest Daughter. And it is indeed Taryn’s eldest who has been suffering; mystery illnesses as well as the predictable pain to which a thirteen-year old is heir.

“Adolescence is hard,” I remind Taryn.

And so is being a single mother. The only advice on that topic I offer my own children is this: family is a team game. If you’re going to have kids with someone, be absolutely sure you want to be with them for life. Because the nuclear family works. Since we’re all restricted to four limbs and are without the power to be in more than one place at a time, ensure your children have two engaged parents. And btw one committed parent trumps any number of half-baked ones. All of the above I learned the hard way.

Taryn’s Father who clearly means well, is forever offering her advice. As are her sister and her Mother – who predictably doesn’t live with her Father any more. And their advice is built on the foundation that Taryn is incompetent. This judgement is not intentional; it’s not even conscious nor for the most part mean, but it’s pretty solid. “You ought to do it like this,” or “You don’t want to do it like that,” land on Taryn’s shoulders with the judgement that the family she grew up with believe her to be useless.

“Maybe they’re right,” she says, sobbing. Tears are so often the point where the healing becomes inevitable but we’re not quite there yet.

The main door of Jack’s West End flat involved doubling back to the rear of the apartment block.

“You keep returning to the door you first came in through,” I remember telling him.

He knew I was talking about the need to learn our life lessons. That, we agreed, appears to be the point of being here. He’d maybe nod affably and pour more Glen Fiddich into the Waterford crystal tumblers.

“You don’t put single malt aged 18 years into crap glasses,” he would say.

Jack had great and eclectic taste in music: from the gentle tunes of Ronnie Lane to the Last Poets and U Roy, he knew heart when he heard it. And listening along I could feel his own heart. I remember us once listening to Bjork deep into the night. “Homogenic,” I think, ethereal spirit-music; that pixie-wail weirdly conjuring the panic of a trapped whale as if the room itself were deep in the North Atlantic.

The South East of Taryn’s property, as it happens is very poorly appointed. There are overgrown bushes (which I can deal with) but also cramped exterior steps and sharp drops. This is the kind of landscape that will activate nasty qi if there happens to be some there. And the Flying Stars – pockets of energy imprinted at the time of construction – have contrived to locate nastiness right in the target area.

Worse, across the road there is scaffolding. Malaysian Master Peter So, among others, considers scaffolding to be the single most harmful feng shui affliction there is. Expect plagues of boils and frogs. Fortunately I know his T’ang Dynasty neutralising formula which under the circumstances it seems only fair to borrow.

I break the news to Taryn that she is to place a six pipe Metal windchime, and three bushy plants outside her front door. Which she’s reasonably okay with

“And paint one of the steps red.”

Which she isn’t. But she eventually buckles in the face of a formula that’s been effective for more than a thousand years.

As time went by Jack drank less Chivas Regal and snorted more blow. Marisa left. Gradually he became paranoid of his business partners – some of whom are household names today – and one day one of Jack’s guests traded his name to the police in return for indemnity. Jack did eighteen months for possession. Which changed but did not break him and taught him nothing really. Afterwards he became very thin and bills piled up under the basket at his front door.

Eventually he moved to Bristol where I visited him one time. We sat and he poured himself some supermarket “Essentials” whiskey in a tooth mug. He was, he told me, working on peripheral vision which he believed allowed him to see vast distances. Don’t ask. Twice I intervened and twice I dragged him to healing workshops.

“You may be demanding angels and avatars, Jack, but I’m the best you’re going to get,” I told him. And he laughed.

Before I leave Taryn, we talk about her children who judging by the medals and artwork and family photographs, are actually doing pretty well. She asks for advice. I am about to oblige but I catch myself. I am probably about the same vintage as her Father. The last thing she needs is another well meaning elder defining her.

“Looks like you’re doing a pretty good job to me,” I say.

And she beams a beam that would set off fireworks.

Miraculously the scaffolding comes down within days. The mystery illnesses take a little longer. I calculate a place for her to position a protective Water fountain to settle both the area and the Eldest Daughter. I return past the ferry and the footsteps of Ho Chi Minh.

Last I saw Jack, he’d lost a couple of teeth; some time since, I guessed from the look of it. I hadn’t seen him for a while; which suited me – on the previous occasion he’d bummed money off me. He was no longer the guy I knew. I noticed that he shuffled from foot to foot, it appeared that his balance had gone. He was barely there. We spoke for a few minutes before he limped off. In my last image of Jack he is crossing Guildford High Street against the lights and cursing a driver who has been forced to brake for him. And then he is gone.

So here’s the question: if method is only a platform, what can we actually hope to control? Not much, if anything; the tao that can be named as Lao Tze wrote, is not the tao.

And here perhaps is an answer: Peter So’s formula is powerful. But approval is too. Whisper it but there may actually be nothing more effective than telling someone something good that’s true; no procedure, no formula, no anchoring, no guided meditation, nothing. Because method is just a platform and there are actually one or two things that matter more.
©Richard Ashworth 2017

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
www.imperialfengshui.info © 2025
art by @elliespinelli ©