Feng Shui at a Respectful Distance

My Corona
Back at the turn of the century I did a whole string of surveys on radio. Listeners would ring up and tell me they had a problem with say, their Father. And so I’d ask them what was happening in the North West of their home, the North West of course being the domain of the Father.

Some would not know how their homes were oriented, let alone how to operate a compass.

“The South is where there’s most light most of the time,” I’d say. “The East is where it rises, the West where it sets.”

“Oh yes, I know where the sun sets, outside the kitchen window.”

“So point just a little to the right of the kitchen window. That’s North West. What’s happening there?”

“It’s kind of missing. The house is L-shaped.”

“Aha. And your Father?”

“Pretty much out of my life.”

“Missing?”

“You could say that.”

And so on.

And of course these consultations were less about precision, more about symbolism, more intuitive, less calculated. And often life-changing.

Obviously it’s easier if I know the house. Which is how I’ve been able for some time to perform Annual Tune-Up Surveys via Zoom and Skype. It’s a popular alternative because it’s both quicker and cheaper. And now with us all overshadowed by Covid-19, for the time being at least, it’s safer.

So when I worked with Monica back in June, it brought those radio sessions flooding back. And this time working at a distance was the only option.

The task was to install a Water Dragon. A complex undertaking at the best of times, my typical Water Dragon consists of an arrangement around the outside of a house including one or more fountains, statuary or stones and sometimes mirrors. A precisely placed and timed Water Dragon is reckoned to hold and distribute health, wealth and wisdom.

Monica lives out in the countryside with a substantial garden which meant that it was harder to make a mistake placing the Dragon correctly. I know the place quite well and I’d measured it up already. So she carried her tablet outside while we examined the places where the Water, statuary and mirror needed to be. At one point we reversed the process and I showed her on my iPad one of the Water features in my garden to illustrate how Water flow can be directed. Our Jack Russell Red helpfully illustrated how to drink from it.

There was much more but she’s a very smart woman so it was relatively straightforward. And as it happened she coughed several times too so I was glad for all of us that we’d done this remotely.

These are obviously not ideal conditions but I’m confident we got it right. We’ll see. When all this nonsense is over I’ll go and inspect.

The radio sessions were a very different process from the painstakingly measured angles and positions of Monica’s Water Dragon. But we live in several worlds simultaneously and the most elegant feng shui works on all three levels of Tian, Ti and Ren: Heaven, Earth and Human. There’s physical material and the laws of physics but there’s lots more. And laws were made to be broken.
Richard Ashworth © 2020