Tuesday September 23rd 2008 00.10

First International Congress on Scientific Feng Shui and Built Environment, Politecnico di Torino, Turin

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Tuesday September 23^rd 2008 00.10

September 18^th-20^th 2008

“The big picture is without form.” Lao Tze.

Luo Pan, Pizza

Flying into Turin over the Alps must be one of the most breathtaking aerial approaches on earth: comparable to Hong Kong or Nice. As my plane descended, the undercarriage felt as if it might scrape the roof of the Superga, the magnificent Savoy palace that stands like a sentinel above the city which is itself divided by the winding River Po. This is real feng shui: real mountains, real wind and real water and Turin is a location that has commanded the Italian peninsula since at least the 1^st millennium BCE.

Sharawadgi is what keynote speaker Derek Walters called it: the mysterious quality that brings pilgrims to a location – Stonehenge, the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, standing stones lost in the wilds of Armenia – for no quantifiable reason. Astonishingly generous with his time, this was the second occasion Derek had addressed a conference apparently simply because I had asked him nicely.

I had a little trouble with the Turin Airport security X-rays which picked out my clear quartz wand, along with the trusty moldavite fragment in my jacket pocket.

“You write with this?” the baffled security officer asked, brandishing it like a stylus.

“No, I point it,” I replied and he shrugged and waved me on as only an Italian can.

Whatever it is, sharawadgi enticed several hundred to Turin the weekend of the 18^th September including some of the most creative and authoritative thinkers on feng shui in the world. These included designers, practitioners, writers, healer, enthusiasts and above all architects, all there to see how their various disciplines might marry to design a sustainable world for the future.

My co-organiser, architect Carlo-Amedeo Reyneri di Lagnasco, and myself had wanted a meeting of the minds, especially between those of architects who might not be feng shui literate and those who were. Principal among the literate was feng shui architect Howard Choy who may lead the world in linking these two spheres. Howard opened proceedings with a deft introduction that placed feng shui and architecture right away into their appropriate relationship with the tao (or way) This was typically both definitive and clear. The Chinese character for “think,” he informed us, differs from that for “observe” by the addition of the ideogram for “heart.” So to think is to observe with heart.

“We don’t say,” he said, inviting us to both observe and think deeply, “That feng shui is a science but that we can study it scientifically.”

There followed a discussion of the traditional tale of Zhuang Tze and the jumping fish. Zhuang Tze says that since the fish are jumping, he knows they’re happy. His sidekick says “How can you be sure? You’re not a fish?” Zhuang Tze says “And you’re not me. So how do you know what I do and do not know?” How did Zhuang Tze know how the fish felt? You had to be there.

Jill Lander bought me lunch at the Charlotte May Ladies Club on Hong Kong Island last year and we got talking about what she might tell a Western audience. She practices feng shui on the Chinese mainland. That’s remarkable enough to be getting on with, I told her. Welsh-born, she graciously tolerated an introduction as English and gave an impressive exposition of the feng shui of Hong Kong, the fragrant harbour, and the threats and opportunities that may lie in its future. Was the Lippo Centre doomed from the start? What will be the future of Lantau Island?

Mauro Aresu and Arianna Mendo next told of their discovery in Sardinia of stone structures holding measurable healing energies. This exercise in the marriage of architecture, archaeology and feng shui in practice led to a series of questions in the panel discussion. These people are worth checking out.

Equally ground-breaking was Anthony Ashworth’s absorbing account of his meetings in Namibia with Credo, the mutwa, or holder of the knowledge of the generations.

Earlier this year, Anthony had emailed me pointing out that we had among other things, names and obsessions in common. Spirit, the Tao or whatever had inspired him to contact me. We discussed the meaning of the name Ashworth. My determinedly grounded father had always told me that it referred to supervision of the charcoal burning involved in the making of soaps. A little prosaic. A reading of John Foster Powys and of Robert Graves’ The White Goddess had suggested otherwise and Anthony had drawn similar conclusions; keepers of the ash groves, we speculated. There the connection ended until a couple of months later, Carlo and I were Googling an authority on what geomantic tradition there might be in sub-Saharan Africa. And there he was. A trip to Congleton to ask the ever-approachable Dawn Gibbins on my bended knees if she would pay for his attendance and Bob (actually my father’s name) was your uncle.

It is usual at these gatherings to have the ancient Indian tradition of Vastu Shastra represented and Giulia Bellentani did this role proud. But Africa was a new departure. Is there an African tradition that corresponds to feng shui? Looks like it. Stay in touch, Tone.

Set in the Po valley among the foothills of the Alps, themselves studded with the historic palaces of the Italian kings, the streets of Torino are laid out in a grid much like Paris or Washington DC. More than once I found time for the coffee for which Turin is famous; a Turineso can smell roasting coffee at a thousand paces. Out walking in search espresso (You ask for latte, they give you milk.) I noticed that some of the paving is made up of the sort of op-art pretend perspective that the Romans used to do in mosaic. Made me clutch the pillars for support frankly. Don’t look down. Conveniently if you look all the way along the long straight avenues in any direction your eye falls on distant green hills. The prescient Savoys also incidentally, knowing that the shadow of the Alps made for above-average rainfall, arranged for cloisters throughout the city centre to shelter the pavements so that (as long as you don’t cross a road) you can shop all day without getting wet. If only Sir Christopher Wren had thought along the same lines.

Emma Re of Sunshine.

On the second day native Turineso and co-organiser Carlo Amedeo Reyneri di Lagnasco’s beautifully illustrated presentation argued convincingly for connections between the power of the Savoy family and the Piemontese landscape. And Carlo pulled off the coup on the Saturday night, of enticing China’s favourite Italian, Emma Re to perform live her newest hit My name is Bruce Lee, the title song of the new Lee biopic. Emma, a sort of Piemontese Celine Dion, had just returned from singing at the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Papers followed from authorities in disciplines as diverse as semiotics, martial arts and urban planning. The Hollywood-based architect Simona Mainini, who I had invited after seeing her in Singapore last year,quoted Frank Lloyd Wright: “Form follows function,” she told us and added that “Function follows the energy.” Simona, a long-time student of Feng Shui Master Larry Sang, served her architectural apprenticeship with Eric Lloyd Wright, grandson of Frank, whose holistic vision of course predated this Congress by more than half a century. Simona went on to show how good drafting and strict adherence to the traditional meanings of flying star patterns could lead to almost supernatural results. The producers of 300 are among those who can endorse this.

Tai chi in the tai chi.

Among other outstanding presentations were Roberto Marrocchesi (described by the absent Jon Sandifer as a true gent, a very special soul) and his moving account of the use of feng shui in rebuilding a family’s life after the death of a child, brought tears to my eyes and I think many others. A sweet sweet man. Francesco Rossena bullied the audience charmingly into practising tai chi with him.

Another highlight was my good friend the irrepressible Priscilla Braccesi who spoke with enormous enthusiasm and authority (without notes) about the feng shui of Milan, past, present and future. She speaks English whose dreadfulness is only exceeded by my own Italian and afterwards it was nice via the miracle of headphone-delivered simultaneous translation, to have my first conversation with her after five years of sign language and pidgin.

The effervescent Master Jin Peh explained the differences between the various types of luo pan with such clarity that when Derek Walters showed one on a slide the next day, whispers could be heard saying “Sam He…no. Zhong He”.

Master Derek, the Godfather of Feng Shui, gave two talks linked by the title Mirrors of the Heavens and showed why he continues to constitute the leading edge in the understanding of Chinese Astrology.

Yangtze Boat Disaster Averted

I first met Gyda Anders in central China. We were both climbing the same ersatz monument reconstructed in cheap plaster. It was, as I recall, on the side of a boating lake. Michael Rapp was there too. Both were scathing about the quality of materials used in the construction that was going on all over China. There in Hubei Province, bamboo scaffolding stretched as far as the eye could see. On the way out, 8 of us shared a 4-seat launch across the lake. I am grateful not only for my survival but also for the lesson learned there that served to ensure that I did not take a similar risk on the Yangtze at Changsha a week or two later. The Yangtze, you may need reminding, is a very big river and this was dead of night. No learning is ever lost.

Gyda is a studious German architect who has presented complex papers all over the world. In Turin she posed questions about the role of traditional feng shui in modern architecture as did Michael,another studious German architect (is there another sort?). Michael is from Munich which may explain why there’s always a little frown behind his eyes and may not. Michael explained movingly how feng shui had put him back in touch with why he had become an architect in the first place. To make better environments for people, he said. Somewhere along the way he had become someone who shoe-horned people into environments that primarily suited planners, builders and cost-accountants. Now he demonstrated how a small number of subtle changes could transform workmanlike architecture into homes that put human wellbeing first and put the frown somewhat into context.

Earth acupuncturist, healer, Cambridge graduate and eccentric, Richard Creightmore, perhaps the world’s leading authority on geopathic stress, covered some familiar territory and some new. It was clear that his priority now is to heal the planet. Richard built his own stone circle in Ashdown Forest in the 1990’s explaining that the employment of astronomical and astrological theory had been augmented by some ideas gleaned from a “chance encounter with a gnome at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury.” Richard’s work is groundbreaking in that he references both the physical Hartman Grid and the metaphors of the Chinese ba zhai system. New to me was his incorporation of the ideas of Masaru Emoto who has shown that water responds distinctively to the emotions expressed around it.

Finally as co-organiserI took my reputation in both hands by making predictions for 2009 based on Four Pillars theory. I was surprised at just how nervous I was. I’m more of a one-to-one man. Suggesting that 2009 might be a year of drought, provoked an appropriate combination of respect and bafflement. Then on the Sunday, as planned, Jon Sandifer failed to turn up, appearing on a big screen explaining the principles of Nine Star Ki so as to show why he as a 2 Earth, could not safely have made a flight to Turin at this time.

A number of human power stations such as the magnificently stylish Dianella Mancin, without whose tireless networking and fund raising the Congress would never have seen the light of day as well as Barefoot Flooring magnate Dawn Gibbins and Lillian Too deserve big thank yous. Hopefully I will see them all before long and repeat my gratitude outside the hurly burly..

Another day another dollar.

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

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

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

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