Wednesday March 21st 2007 21.08

chow fun – Spring Equinox

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Wednesday March 21st 2007 21.08

Hour Day Month Year

wood wood water fire

yi chia quai ding

hai yin muw hai

pig monkey rabbit pig

Month: ren yin the water Rabbit

Solar Fortnight: chow fun Spring Equinox

Rabbits Running

The second half of the month of the Rabbit.

Here in Godalming it has been a dark time with the newspapers full of 7-year-old Jethro Field’s grisly end at the hands of his father. There are hideous crimes and there are hideous crimes but this one bankrupts expression. I wouldn’t want at this point to attempt to make sense of it.

I remember back in the 90’s when some friends’ infant son died. I attended the funeral. If you are aware of these things you could feel the grief from about ? a mile off. That morning the local vicar had visited.

“In time you’ll understand this was God’s will,” he told my friends.

He was lucky to escape with his own life.

This month is a water Rabbit, quai muw, sometimes called the Rabbit Running in the Forest. The Rabbit conjures up cuddly images to the average Westerner: Bugs Bunny and Thumper in “Bambi” but for the Chinese the Rabbit is linked to the moon and female mystery. It is yin wood like the grass, so its strength is subtle. The wind can blow a tree over and an axe can destroy it but neither will do much damage to grass. The Rabbit has a reputation for appropriate timing. It knows which season suits which activity; like the grass it knows when to stand and when to yield. I remember once watching a dog catch a young rabbit. The dog, with the gentle mouth of the retriever, held the rabbit gently a moment without shaking it. Apparently unharmed I watched the light go out in the young rabbit’s eyes until its neck flopped over and it was dead.

The months of course run in the same cycle of 60 pillars as the years. So the nature of a water Rabbit month is similar to that of a water Rabbit year. Last time the water Rabbit appeared as a year pillar was 1963. 1963 was the year of the Bay of Pigs and of the assassination of Jack Kennedy. The Iran hostage drama may “echo” the former.

We talk about Jethro and his family and the pain ricocheting among them. This darkness has come down the generations and threatens to rebound into the future.

“He must have been so frightened,” Joey says.

I reassure him that what I make of the incident is that it was rapid and that Jethro would not have hung about. But what an obscenity – of all human rights, perhaps the most basic is that a parent is there to protect. It is an agonising thought. We may know that things happen for a reason but it is not satisfying at this level.

We know the family. My daughter-in-law Tracey taught all the kids at one time or another and Jethro’s eldest sister is a close friend of Jess and Henni, my daughters. My son Thom who taught the sister bass guitar says he just looks at his own 6-year-old, thinks of Jethro and can’t stop hugging him.

And so the pain reverberates out into the world.

In the 80’s I knew another guy who killed his own son. I allude to him in the Feng Shui Diaries.

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

my book The Feng Shui Diaries is out now!

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

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

Corporate and Media Contact: Peter Dunne. Tel. 07768 617330 peter@peterdunne.com

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