Saturday January 20th 2007 18.51

dai hohn – Great Cold

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Saturday January 20^th  2007  18.51

Hour      Day       Month   Year

water                      wood                       metal                      fire

gui                  chia                 xin                   ding

yuw                 yin                  chow                hai

rooster                   tiger                       ox                            pig

Month:                 xin chow        the metal Ox

Solar Fortnight:   dai hohn     Great Cold

Roamin Roads

Dai Hohn, Great Cold: this is the beginning of the last month in the Chinese year as it is generally reckoned although for me the year started at the Winter Solstice and the Chinese New Year is not actually until February 18^th. 

I am summoned by Beattie to the wilds of Shropshire hard by Watling Street. Watling Street is a Roman road that describes a “v” progressing north east from Exeter to Leicester and thence south east to London. These frontier roads were constructed rapidly by tightly-drilled legionaires as they claimed new territories, the roads often built literally as they advanced, using standard procedures and as far as possible the same materials. What is for sure is that both sides of this road, Roman to the East and Celtic to the West, saw more than their fair share of bloodshed while the route was under construction and indeed since.

Here in West Shropshire the landscape is on a big scale. There are gorges and cliffs and defiles. Beattie drives and chatters while I peer nervously over the sheer drops. I imagine the car roly-polying down to the valley floor and blink it away. It may be a good day to die but I’m not quite ready.

Beattie is a clairvoyant. We talked off and on for over two years before she finally called me in. At various times she has complained her house is haunted and more recently that her neighbours are dropping like flies. I’m not entirely sure what to expect or what my brief may be. Not that this is unusual. Her ba zi (or personal feng shui, often misleadingly called a Chinese Horoscope) suggests that like so many healers she could use a little herself.

The quality of the grass on the ridge is poor. The theory is that the chi (or energy) of the land rolls down the hills (or dragons) into the valley where it will find water to rest at. The scrubby and intermittent grass is a sure sign that the dragon underlying the hills has been disturbed. Mining or trapped water will be the culprit and decimated neighbours may be a symptom.

As we enter Beattie’s home valley I look back up the slope. The town appears to occupy a space that ought to be a lake. I have no idea how long ago this happened but as I look back I can see the hills folding into each other where two ranges meet, expecting a body of water that is not here. This will be a damp place for sure and damp generally means disturbed. And of course the Roman road confirms that there has been mayhem locally for millennia: border disputes, civil war, robbery and pillage. There is powerful chi nearby but it’s not in this valley.

I ask Beattie to drive me up and down a stretch of Watling Street. It is of course dead straight. She chunters amusingly, full of anticipation and I don’t want to disappoint her. Although she is a little older than me her energy is very sweet and young.

She lives alone and and has done so for more than 20 years. Since her ex left; there is an unnecessarily long pause after this. Her ba zi suggests he was a charismatic philanderer. Of all human qualities I think charisma may be the most overrated.

Her garden is drenched and undrained although it is some way up the valley wall. The hard ancient stone underneath will not let the moisture go. This suits the sheep in the field behind of course but it’s not healthy. In her garden the water butt is overflowing. Stagnant water holds stagnant energy. Her complaints start to make sense even before we enter the house.

Beattie is a rather good clairvoyant as it happens and her office is full of testimonials. From all over the world there are little notes attesting to how much difference she has made to so many lives. “What would I have done without you?”  “You changed my life,” and so on. She half-complains, half-boasts that the house is full of “stuff” which of course it is. “Stuff” is her stock-in-trade. Shadows move unpredictably and the lights aren’t quite bright enough. In her dining room I describe someone with a face half-paralysed. It turns out a previous owner had a stroke here and died. There is nothing threatening; it’s just a bit busy.

“There’s a lot of it, isn’t there?” she says. “It can be quite disturbing.”

“Make up your mind,” I say, “You’re like a chicken farmer complaining about the eggs.”

“Should I move?”

Some of her paintings – landscapes – are on the wall. They are pretty good. I compliment her. She says she is taking lessons and shows me how one has been reconstructed from a photo.

I breathe in deeply and some of the “stuff” starts to circulate. This sort of chi is typically found in the North East which is the home of Gen the mountain, where things stop. The Chinese call this the Ghost Gate. In some houses it is closed and in most inactive. Beattie’s is wide open.  I imagine that with each client it opens wider.

The chi stops abruptly at a wall in the North West where it feels like there ought to be a door. A huge grandfather clock backs onto it. Clocks generally belong in the North where cycles are sustained. We want a mirror here to open it up. I consult my hexagram formulae to ensure I have found the right place. There are several more to put in the active locations to catch the chi and she will need heavy objects for the still ones.

Outside I see that the garden dips away suddenly at the same position in the garden as the clock occupies inside.

The theory is that mirrors mimic moving water. Still locations call for something heavy to mimic the mountain. I usually recommend Buddhas because when you are looking for male statues with spiritual clout, candidates are limited. Most of us are uneasy with hanging Christs all over the place and gnomes don’t fit the bill entirely. This is li xi pai, the feng shui of  small spaces.

I look up and the sky is wild with retained rain.

The problem is that in this valley, the water has dissipated all over the place. That is why the grass on the high passes is scrappy, I think. I tell Beattie about Godalming, my home, where the flood meadows or Lammas Lands have protected the water for centuries. I recall one client telling me how reassured he was that I lived in Godalming. Tough to be wierd in the stockbroker belt. Not so much mining there of course.

She thinks she should move. I think she is right. We agree that in order for her to move house, some of this stuff has to move on. We must exchange stale North Eastern energy for healing from the South East, the home of the healing wind Xun who is a byword for thoroughness.

The damp which in the absence of sunshine, hangs in the air as far as the eye can see, is not curable and the garden has jagged twists and turns. So we do some tricks. We move the North East around a little, describe paths to the house and brighten up the threshold.

She asks me where the best feng shui is. I point across the valley.

“Over there, between the dragons, can you see?” Where I’m pointing is a little low but there’s nothing substantial further up, the very best feng shui would be between the ranges of hills and somewhat up the valley. This position coincides with what the Romans called the military ridge, unthreatened by wind or flood and hard to pick from far off. I’m singling out a big house with great jutting turrets like something out of Mervyn Peake.

Beattie has children and grandchildren and painful unfulfilled business with her ex. This is consistent with the disturbed North West of the house which symbolically stands for the mature man. Like the rest of us, she needs someone to look at it all from outside and I am elected.

It’s the “F” word again: forgiveness. She adores her grandchildren, has certain reservations about her daughters and would sooner not expand on what she wishes for her ex. She is too smart and goodhearted truly to wish him ill but she has worried, inspected and dismissed the issue for decades without resolution. Time to let it go. Just as we can’t release a house without moving the stuff along, we can’t release ourselves without admitting we need release.

For years, every day of the week she has been pouring out love to strangers while her own life has remained on hold.

I ask her to move the grandfather clock well away from the blocked spot and at the corresponding dip in the garden, trim back an unruly hedge.

She apologises for her tears. No need for an apology. I am touched, flattered even.

We move along more stuck energy inside then do a final circuit of the exterior, paying special attention to a shed in the South East. As well as healing, Xun represents the eldest daughter. Beattie has been feeling coldshouldered by her own eldest daughter. We brighten up the front and set a date for the house to go on the market, lingering energies dismissed. The North East where her conservatory opens onto the garden, will circulate the chi as the year progresses and the weather improves. Meanwhile we have invited the freshness of the Wind. It may take a little while.

She serves up soup and forces a wonderful cake on me and then drives me the dozen miles to Shrewsbury.

She rings me several times in the following weeks. One calls celebrates the fact that after all this time her eldest daughter is paying her attention out of the blue, another is to attribute the sale of her first painting to me, a third to complain that she has done no business for a week.

Sty Guru II: What happens to whom in 2007, the Year of the Pig

Attached to this message are my annual hostage to fortune: the predictions for 2007 the the Year of the Fire Pig.

The Fire Pig has certain implications for other branches or animals. Pigs for instance don’t get on with each other. Dragons, Roosters and Horses don’t either. This is called the self curse These are the loners of the Chinese calendar. Traditionally Snakes suffer in the Pig year; immobility of one kind or another being the usual complaint. But a lot depends on which Pig or Snake we are discussing; an Earth Snake (1977) has a very different time of it than a Water Snake (1941).

And a Wood Snake like Tony Blair (1953) is different again. He is actually a good example of why the month and hour of birth can be as important as the year because he is a triple Snake, born in the year, month (May) and day of the Snake. This is not good news in 2007.

As I said, mobility is the general issue. Snakes should drive carefully now and my own son Jaime, a 1977 Earth Snake, entered the Pig year with a mystery leg complaint.

Tony Blair is pretty much a text book case.

The Chinese calendar is made up of triple alliances of animals: Monkey, Dragon and Rat is one. The Snake is in triple alliance with the Ox and the Rooster. All things being equal, they look after each other. So you’d expect Blair to be elected in the Ox year of 1997 and re-elected in the Rooster year of 2005. What happens after that rush of good fortune?

Well, the calendar also features oppositions: Rat and Horse, Tiger and Monkey, for instance, Snake and Pig. And in a Pig year, the Pig is in charge.

In Blair’s case immobility may be as much attitudinal as physical. He is not one to allow good sense to shake him from a position. Maybe the Pig energy will emphasise that. But I rather think not. An implication of the unbalanced Snake is heart issues and a triple Snake is as unbalanced as a Snake gets. But then the most ambitious of us often are.

Attached to this diary entry there is more on what’s cooking in the year of the Fire Pig, as well as my detailed predictions animal by animal for 2007.

I cover the fortunes of the animals in 2007 on my myspiritradio show: http://www.myspiritradio.com/3-ashworthr.html; in February.

My new super-duper revamped website is at www.imperialfengshui.info and

my book The Feng Shui Diaries is out February 15th.

If you’re feeling rash you can order it from:

Amazon  (www.amazon.co.uk/Feng-Shui-Diaries-Richard-Ashworth/dp/1846940176/sr=8-4/qid=1166798863/ref=sr_1_4/026-3383613-4930062?ie=UTF8&s=books ,

Waterstones www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=5567853)

or indeed Tescos.

Names have been changed.

Richard Ashworth