Thursday December 7th 2006 14.23

dai shuut – Great Snow

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Thursday December 7th 2006 14.23

Hour Day Month Year

water metal metal fire

gui geng geng bing

wei wu tze xu

sheep horse rat dog

Month: geng tze the metal Rat

Solar Fortnight: dai shuut Great Snow

Dog turns to Pig

As I calculate the year from the solstice which is of course on the 22nd, this is the last diary of the Fire Dog.

Now the chi is almost gone. The year retreats into its hole. Everything slows down almost but not quite to a standstill. Although the commuter trains are still full at 05.35, this is not a time for thrust and pursuit but a time for storage, for withdrawal and for assessment.The year of the Fire Dog which has not been the greatest year for international understanding and harmony, gives way to the Fire Pig which frankly, won’t be either.

Here the kids are spending days in their pyjamas and no one ventures into the garden.

I have been working on my year predictions for 2007. Although I had done all the drafing by November, the predictions have been coming more slowly than usual. I think this is because they appear so dark. 2007 looks like a minefield wherein all the lessons we must learn will come the hard way. Wars will end but not without further needless mayhem, fortunes will be made at a higher than usual cost in human misery. Not that these things are ever inevitable. We can learn by consideration and we can choose. Human beings have the gift of thinking forward into probable futures but also the gift of deceiving ourselves that things are not as they are. We can choose any future we want but we have to tell the truth about the present first. This is the tao.

I aim for my predictions, based on the stems and branches of the year as well as the underlying hexagrams from the Book of Changes, to be useful as well as entertaining. Tooth-sucking is so easy and so unhelpful.

And yes any Pig Year is tricky for Snakes and Monkeys and a rollercoaster for Pigs themselves but this is trite stuff.

In 2007 it looks as if Spring will break very late after a cold winter that will call global warming a liar. Light will be at a premium. And lightness and enlightenment. Good times for French rugby, West Indian cricket and the Tory Party. Also Glasgow Celtic but not Rangers. My predictions, of which these are a taste, will as usual be out at the beginning of January.

House and Garden.

I’ve been working on Naomi’s big house in North London. It’s a beautiful house as I keep reassuring her with each flaw I point out, boasting wood panels and big windows. This is my third day here; the first time Naomi was in such distress that we spent the whole day on soul work based around her ba zi. She is a mother, grandmother, wife and artist, in something like that order. Each of these roles has presented a series of puzzles. Children, as I have said before are God’s* way of keeping us anxious. And anxiety of course is God’s way of letting us know we are not alone.

Naomi is brave, bright, humble and creative. We dealt with a lot of history and I left her with a smile on her face. The second visit was to take the measurements I missed first time, this third one to tell her what I have found.

The initial problem is that the garden has been nicked. On one side there is a nursing home that occupies what was probably an apple orchard in the 1920’s. Not many of those in N14. The front door opens onto a wall scarcely 8 feet away. This scrap of land is where we want the ming tang or bright hall. The ming tang represents the future. Naomi’s is looking awfully cramped.

On the other side of the house, the neighbour’s trees are far too close and positioned in all the wrong places. Trees should never be disproportionate or encroach on a building.The trick is to place them in the correct Imperial Heaven Stars, a scheme of 24 positions each of which has precise meaning, showing exactly what goes where outside. If the tree is correctly placed, keep it under control to gain benefit. If it’s wrong, correct it by er….keeping it under control. Many of these are aggressive fastgrowing conifers that leave a desert of dead brown earth at their roots and steal the light. Naomi has this handled but unfortunately that’s because her insurance company have a court order against the neighbour whose conifers are causing subsidence on Naomi’s side.

The subsidence is under the swimming pool which takes up fully one third of the floor space. The pool has been tacked onto one side of the house so it is hugely disproportionate, making the house into what is often called an axe-shape. This shape is outlawed by all the easy feng shui books but the rationale is not the one they usually give: that the shape itself is inherently unlucky. The problem is that the tai chi or heart of such a house is outside the house. In this case it has been moved out by the extension. When I measure the longest length by the widest width, I find the heart is actually on the patio. This renders it literally heartless. Usually there are relationship problems in such a home. I can move it but it’s a tricky job. Just as unhelpful is that the hatchet shape excludes great chunks of chi. Different aspirations, qualities or characters occupy specific areas of the house; three are virtually eliminated here. This brilliant family does not – yet – boast a single unqualified contented, success among its number. The family I grew up in bristled with unfulfilled talent. I know this pattern very well.The danger of dislocating the tai chi, by the way, is one reason good feng shui generally coexists with regular shaped buildings.

Indoors there is a patch of woo-woo™ under the stairs. This type of uncomfortable energy seems to gather under those distinctive low ceilings that are an inevitable part of a single staircase serving three floors.

I place a t’ang lung shape here to help dissolve the discomfort. I’m not in a hurry to identify such stuff – sticking on the level of metaphor gives me more to play with – but I sense a large, mean dog. Naomi confirms that just such a beast was here before they moved in in 2001. I can smell it. Interesting the shapes chi comes in. I don’t pander to its dogginess, just breathing in and allowing it as I would with any ghost, ghoulie or thing that went bump in the night. I doubt it’ll take much moving. Why bother? you might ask. Well the answer to that is that the dark feelings that linger under the stairs are easily taken on by those who pass, as their own feelings. The human mind rationalises so fast it can miss such things altogether. We feel something, we explain it, we make up a story about it and in the blink of an eye we have explained the darkness into the scheme of our lives. It’s because of this or because of that. This happened which led to this which led to that and so I feel this way. And meanwhile the feeling lurks under the stairs attaching itself to whoever passes. I’ll check it again after Christmas but it’s draining away already.

The pièce de resistance is the swimming pool. Apart from being huge, it’s in the North West which accomplishes the twin trick of undermining authority, good decisions and fathering while limiting brightness, accomplishment, fame and intellectual and artistic achievement. The water drains the metal of Qian the Father here while the axe-handle forces all of the South and most of the South East and South West out into the garden.

I recommend in order of simplicity that: they move, they drain the pool or that I do a lot of energy-movement for them. This last is both the hardest to accomplish and the most likely choice.

Seasonal Adjustment

Little Rebecca is suffering from a mystery infection. Her ba zi suggests it peaks around now and that it will pass before Christmas. Any benevolence, love or golden light you feel able to spare at this time of goodwill should be directed to her. Thank you. Just a moment’s consideration makes such a difference.

I cover the fortunes of the animals on my radio show http://www.myspiritradio.com/3-ashworthr.html; those for December 2006 on the current show, 2007’s follow in January.

My new super-duper revamped website is at www.imperialfengshui.info and my book The Feng Shui Diaries comes out in February. You can order it from Amazon now.

Names have been changed.

Richard Ashworth

29, Portsmouth Road, Godalming, Surrey, GU7 2JU | tel: 01483 428998 | info@imperialfengshui.info

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