Sunday October 23rd 2006 21.37
zeun gong – Hoar Frost Descends
Richard Ashworth
Feng Shui Diaries
Solar fortnight beginning:
Sunday October 23rd 2006 21.37
Hour Day Month Year
fire wood earth fire
ding yi wu bing
hai yuw xu xu
pig rooster dog dog
Month: wu xu the Dog.
Solar Fortnight: zeun gong Hoar Frost Descends
Ramma Lamma Ding Dong
It seems to have been raining forever. The lawn here has only been mowed twice since September. Partly that’s because we all have such busy schedules in this house, partly it’s because the grass has never been dry enough. We want to cut the grass not tear great divots out of it like like an England goalkeeper.
Here in Godalming, surface water gravitates to the Lammas Land. The name of this flood meadow, deriving from the Celtic harvest god Lug, indicates its age. Godalming was a major wool town in the Middle Ages and farmers used to fatten their sheep on the grass of the Lammas Land made lush by the Spring floods. Whenever the River Wey broke its banks the flood meadow filled and the water table settled at its new level. Without this, even today, the whole area would flood but because town planners have left it alone, for upwards of a thousand years the Wey valley has been safe.
This is feng shui in action; man showing proper respect for the water.
It is perfectly normal for the Lammas Land to be lake during March. And at the end of this sodden October it ought to be but it isn’t. The water table is so low even the serial peltings of the last month have not raised it. These are strange times we live in.
This fortnight starts with some very aggressive animals: dogs eat dogs, dogs crowd pigs, they’re both uneasy with the rooster. As the nature of the fortnight is defined by the chi at its start this one starts in some chaos. At home, keep your back to the North West. This of course is where the Dog energy comes from, especially in this double Dog month.
Three Generations
David is a frustrated writer. He has written several fragments and one unpublished novel which sounds interesting, drawing on his experiences as an engineer in the Far East. His shelves hold the Hong Kong novels of James Clavell who is a big influence. You could do worse.
As I enter, before he tells me any of this, I read from his ba zi (personal feng shui): “Man in wrong job.”
If I draft them right, they tell me stuff like this.
The younger of his two daughters is a gifted dancer as was her mother. Her grandmother was a member of the iconic Tiller Girls who were famous for their display of impossible stretches of thigh on tv in the 1950’s.
Right now he works in town planning. David is a little rudderless. Is he an engineer, a clerk or a writer?
“It takes three generations to make a writer,” I say.
We are alone in the house; the girls are at school, his wife at work. He has pen and paper. He is in charge of this project which is to get the house sold. I do a lot of this type of work; it’s usually just a case of exciting the energy so as to clear the air, brighten the colours and open up the channels to Heaven. Precisely placed water is the key to this as it is to 70%+ of feng shui problems. We place the water then we pull back hedge to make the house visible from the approach. This will bring purchasers in and get them interested. Then we extend the foliage on the side away from the approach which will hold onto the purchasers.
So far so simple.
Feng shui is both a healing and a divining tool. Generally divining is simple. A house with a hugely disproportionate conservatory at the NorthWest like this one, tells me lots more than David has. The trick is the healing part.
The house starts to tell me more: the South West which represents his wife has been in effect thrown out by the huge conservatory and in that area he has placed a single ceramic crane. Cranes carry a good deal of symbolic luggage one of which is that they mate for life. A single crane is a bit of a statement. I point this out; he shows me that there actually is a second crane but it’s in the NorthWest. Separate lives. We place them together in the SouthWest. I do virtual work to re-include the missing bits. In between the SouthWest and North West of course is the West which tends to symbolise young girls. He loves his daughters. He is very keen to include them. We remove a four tube wind chime from the centre of the house where if it has been doing anything it has been doing the opposite.
The house is cramped; there’s just a little too much in it. The estate outside reflects this; the houses are just a little too close together, the road a little narrow. I can understand why he wants to move further out into the country. He doesn’t necessarily want a bigger house just more space.
Then he’ll be able to write.
“Perhaps dancers take three generations,” I suggest. “What did your father do?”
A frustrated man, he’d had ambitions to write but was not a writer
The Flying Stars and David’s ba zi show that he had a rush of energy around the time he built the conservatory. It looks like the project took the energy rather than the writing.
“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” he says.
What I don’t want David to do is make this another sensible tidy project that keeps him sensibly, constructively, busy. I tell him I want him to exercise; he has a little weight to lose and exercise is a tidy way to introduce the yang wood energy he needs.
We talk at length about relationship. I described him as “rudderless.” Relationship like every other ship, is female. If the ship is going anywhere there is a woman at the rudder. Cherchez la femme.
We have taped the whole conversation going around the house in which I have detected above all a wife at the end of her tether with restlessness at his reluctance to fulfill himself. Her fulfillment of course is locked into his. I make it a condition that he plays her the tape.
We do some li xi pai tricks to his office to get him started, repositioning his desk and armchair for maximum creativity.
“Before you write, centre yourself, read Clavell’s Noble House rapidly and centre yourself again. Make no attempt to be influenced by him,” is my last recommendation.
A week later he emails me to tell me he has made all the physical changes. No mention of his wife so I email him back and ask if she has listened to the tape.
What I don’t want is for him to make another diversionary project out of selling the house. On the other hand that should be hard to do given the changes already made.
I have told him that I will come back if there is not rapid movement; what I want is for him to achieve his ambitions. So does his wife and his daughters and indeed the house. That just leaves him to catch up.
If this is not quite enough for you, my voice is featured on http://www.myspiritradio.com/3-ashworthr.html Programmes change monthly; this month there is an interview with Neil Somerville, (author of the annual Your Chinese Horoscope) as well as regular features like the Flying Stars for October. My new super-duper revamped website is at www.imperialfengshui.info and my book The Feng Shui Diaries comes out in April 2007.
Names have been changed.
Richard Ashworth