Monday May 21st 2008 00.51

Grain Filling Snake, Dog Emptying

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Monday May 21^st 2008 00.51

Hour Day Month Year

earth metal fire earth

wu sun ding wu

tze yuw si tze

rat rooster snake rat

Month: ding si the fire Snake

Solar Fortnight: siu mun Grain Filling

Grain Filling Snake, Dog Emptying.

On the other side of this B-road in front of me there is a queue of traffic held up by a caravan wanting to turn right. It’s 5pm, traffic on my side of the road rushes by and the queue is growing. I slow up and flash the caravan to cross. Inwardly I’m as impatient as the next guy but I usually let people turn right across me or come out of poorly-sighted exits in the hope of delaying the inevitable gridlock that will one day freeze all traffic. I can see in my mind the long golden snake stationary between Dover and Exeter. And I imagine the M25 ring road like a fabulous shiny metal wristwatch of cars, vans and lorries, honking and steaming. How far into the future is that? Closer than peace in the Middle East, I think.

As any Wicca will tell you, it takes extraordinary sensitivity to measure your life by the phases of the moon. It’s so much easier to observe the Sun; you just look up and it’s there. If it’s cold it must be winter.

Agricultural terms like Grain Filling remind us that the cycles described by the Chinese characters above have their origins in the farming calendar. As the Celts had names for each moon – the Hunter’s Moon, the Warriors’ Moon and so on – so the Chinese named each of twenty four solar fortnights or breaths. These bisect the Solar months, every one of which is named for an animal. So we are in the second half of the month of the fire Snake, in the breath known as grain filling.

* Personal feng shui based on date of birth, sometimes misleadingly called a Chinese Horoscope.

This morning at 6am I was gathering dog turds on the back lawn. Actually, as the garden faces South into open country and is lower than the front, this is from a feng shui standpoint, the front. While I gather I remember that this last is crucially powerful information. Sounds so simple though.

The dog droppings are the exclusive leavings of our Collie-cross Zusu (named by Jessie after the little girl in It’s a Wonderful Life) Picking them up in a series of inverted Sainsburys’ bags is not a glamorous job but the sun was bright and the world still quiet. Before I leave the house I tell Sheila the job is done; all safely stowed and ecologically sound in the rough ground to the South West and she responds with as much respect as if I had returned from Mafeking.

Men are trained to be heroes and generally fail especially in their own eyes. But it is my observation that most women would settle for a man who will clear dog-droppings at dawn.

I am driving between Poole in Dorset, and London, coming away from Carly and Gordon’s business where a door in the West, freshly painted red, has coincided with a boost in business. It’s an odd office, oriented North-South but with a door to the West. In this Earth Rat year which is short in metal and fire, a Western door is a gift because it brings in the missing metal. Paint it red, you both add the fire element to balance the office in this very unbalanced year and introduce the perennial red and white of money.

I am sometimes told these diaries are short of actual feng shui tips. Generally my response is what they used to say on Blue Peter which is “Don’t try this at home” but I know that’s not much fun and probably sounds very arrogant. But here is a tip: especially in 2008, red and white together mean money. Look at the house colours of the Chinese Banks: Bank of China, red and white. HSBC: red and white. They know this stuff. They may be unable to construct dams that hold back water but only 11% of China is arable and yet it has fed all those people for thousands of years. Element theory is at the bottom of this.

Notice by the way, how in their promotional material this year, HSBC are using pairs of open fans which together form a figure 8, generally reckoned the most auspicious number there is. These people mean business.

Eagles, Tango, Rackets.

I am now heading for London where I have a ba zi session with Anabela.

On the car stereo is the newest Eagles album. It’s just like the old ones, pretty good except for the Joe Walsh track. There he is again groaning through some tuneless guff. If he now has a contractual right to contribute one such clunker to every album it’s open to question whether hell might have been better off unfrozen. But I enjoy the rest of it; the traditional misogyny melted with lovely harmonies.

The last ba zi session with Anabela and Mark was the 5^th for each though it was their first one together. He is a smart Polish entrepreneur with a variety of gifts including a scratch golf game. His ba zi suggests a prominent and influential future.

She is an Italian tango dancer with the graceful sinuousness that implies. They are deeply in love after five years. They have been fighting. They fight a lot. At such times they deny they are in love.

Their ba zis are interestingly linked. On one level they have what some call “mutual rackets” that is to say that their weaknesses are so complementary that they could be overlooked. The tacit agreement in a relationship often amounts to: I won’t challenge you if you don’t challenge me. Comfort, peace and long life may follow but rarely satisfaction.

Often an angry man matches a compulsive listener or a pessimist sets up home with an optimist. The roles have to be filled. This is the yin and the yang of it: The most positive gets to be the positive one and the other, however naturally positive, becomes the negative pole. Or Pole. So Mark gets to be insensitive and Anabela gets to be precious though neither is truly either of these things.

“Sometimes he is just so gross,” she says.

That’s a bloke for you.

The ba zi shows what some call a Punishment Clash on the one hand and a Bullying Clash on the other. Technically this is to do with how the animals in their ba zis get along. In practice it makes for argument.

Mark wants a baby. So does Anabela. She has been unable to conceive. Her tears have been endless. Before we met, her pattern had been of conceiving and not being able to take a baby to term. Then she was unable to conceive. I have placed feng shui trickery in and around her house – conception is a particular trick – and we have spent hours in ba zi sessions. Often she cries but she leaves every session smiling. I think this means we are getting somewhere.

Growing Pains

Anabela thinks Mark has a lot of growing up to do. She’s right of course. What man doesn’t? My observation is that few men grow up and some women don’t. But then you’re sort of stuck with us unless you want to opt out or take the Sapphic alternative. The House of Lords has just made that a brighter option I notice.

Anabela can’t wait forever.

It may be that men are from Milletts and women are from Harvey Nicks. Some couples never bother to get to know each other at all. Some couples settle for their prejudices: men don’t listen so all we have left is manipulation and women are manipulative so don’t give them ammunition

Mark and Anabela have recently had a particularly ugly argument.

“This is good,” I tell them. “While you’re arguing you’re involved.”

“I know really,” says Anabela. And of course she does. She could not hear it otherwise of course.

He’s a Dog and she’s a Sheep which is a sparky pairing but the finer detail of the ba zi’s is so complementary and there is such tenderness between these two.

“I think you may need to observe some rules,” I tell them. “If you’re going to clear the ground for this.”

1. Nobody’s going anywhere.
2. Arguments go on forever if no one’s listening. So listen closely.
3. If the upsets keep coming up, generally it shows a lack of goodwill. An issue needs to be aired and completed and then left behind.
4. If you love someone, treat them like you love them. Shouting, swearing and verbal abuse are generally at odds with this.
5. Today’s upsets are never about today. They probably showed up first when you were a child and many would say you brought your upsets in with you. Either way blame gets us nowhere. God blamed Adam, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake.

There’s more.

Who am I to impose this on adults? My excuse is that I have a contract to help, a lot of mistakes in the bank and a mess of mumbo-jumbo to share.

The clashes in the ba zi also mean that something dramatic is overdue; one reading is that Mark’s business is taking another direction. I suggest this although my own take is that a baby is on the way. I have been diverting them with the first idea so that they can get on with dealing with what matters.

When I get to their house, Mark has had another bonfire on the lawn. Anabela is climbing the walls about this but she has placed both the Buddha I prescribed at the front and the water in the back garden. Lulu their terrier has been busy out there, I notice. This rear garden is also both the ming tang where chi must gather and the site of the wealth or water star.

Oh and she’s pregnant.

Richard Ashworth © 2008

Names have been changed to protect..uh…me.

My (still) super-duper (still) revamped website is atwww.imperialfengshui.info and my book The Feng Shui Diaries is available now from:

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