Richard Ashworth’s Feng Shui Tune-Up for 2010

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Tuesday December 22^nd 2009 01.40

 

Hour	Day	Month	Year
metal	metal	fire	metal
tsun	tsun	bing	gung
chou	chou	tze	yan
ox	ox	rat	tiger
Month:	bing tze	the fire Rat
Solar Fortnight:	dung jee	Winter Solstice

 Richard Ashworth’s Feng Shui Tune-Up for 2010 

 Tiger Raw

As promised here is what to do and where to do it in 2010.. My daughter Jessie calls this «Where to put stuff to get stuff » It doesn’t make racy reading. 

Below  is the matrix of how I Tune-up a building for 2010:

 The magic square or lo shu has an 8 at its centre this year. Usable sectors are marked in red and not-so good in black. You locate them by finding the tai chi or heart of your house (the geometric centre) and standing there with a decent compass. You’ll find the tai chi by measuring the widest width by the longest length; where the lines cross is the heart. Feng shui is a very personalied thing: bear in mind that this advice refers only to the pockets of energy for 2010 which are the same in every house. Some aspects of this advice may not suit you or your house; you would need me there to be quite sure. So I’m not to blame if you are for instance oriented NE-SW and you get a plague of boils. Oh and I never said it was easy to follow. Okay?

                                      S

                                       7       3       5

                             E       6       8       1        W

                                      2       4       9

                                                N

 1.      De-activate the South East (Water to SE3)

Remove temporary plants, lights, music or crystals placed there  in 2009 as the SE now holds the aggressive Red 7 Star. There may be reasons to maintain activation but the implications of  exciting the 7 Star must be borne in mind. Ground falling away will naturally activate the South East as will water both ofwhich stimulate communication but higher ground in the     South East is physically dangerous this year. Auspiciously timed and placed Water at SE3 (the Snake) where the Moon  sits will encourage ideas to turn to money.

2.      Do not disturb the South West which holds the Year Breaker as well as the 5 yellow. No decorating and especially no  digging, drilling or excavation. If disturbance is absolutely inevitable, ask me for an auspicious moment. This applies even  if the 5 has been banished using the prescribed procedure   during January. Avoid using doors in this location.

3.      Activate the East which holds the 6 of authority and establishment. Activate W1 simultaneously at an auspicious moment to maximize the benefit. Work, play and open doors here. Light and plants are especially effective .

4.      Activate the West 1  for talk and celebration, timely assistance and last-minute preparation. Noise: as loud as you like. No water. Activate W1 simultaneously with E for optimum results at auspicious moment. Work, play and open doors here. Metal objects, the colour white, globes and circles will work here.

5.      East-West Ritual Place three candles in the E and seven at  W1 burning constantly plus a bowl of (new moon charged) crystals to keep these sectors integrated. Fine tuning: take three crystals from East to West at dawn and seven back to West at dusk. Balance the numbers of crystals at new moon.

6.      South: judicious use of S1 & S3

The South holds the argumentative 3 star as well as the Three Curses, making it an area to be cautious of. Both S1 and S3 however can be used to effect breakthrough (and indeed conception) with careful activation. The default quality of the fire of the South is fame and advancement but fire will have a personal significance in each ba zi. Make it light and bright.

7.      North: trigger appropriately along with West.

Carefully placed and timed water will activate career, authority, 0pportunities, relationship and control. Other activation of the  North brings only scandal. The more water and the more active  the more power in 2010.

8.      Use the North West

 The North West is the key from 2009-2011: work, play, open door or window here for wealth. From Jan 5^th burn six candles all day here including at least 3 of the hours of darkness.

9.      Keep the tai chi quiet and still.

10.    Stay out of the tai sui in the North East

Sickness and property follow the 2 Star. SW-NE oriented houses risk financial dramas. Avoid using doors here. Higher ground and the taller parts of the building bring property luck out of illness if in the NE. Lower rooms and water the reverse.

 I hope you find this useful.

Next fortnight, the year animals and after that at last my diaries will again be magical, chatty, wise and literate. Watch this space.

 ©Richard Ashworth 2010

Towards 2012: What to expect from the Metal Tiger, Richard Ashworth’s year forecast for 2010

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Tuesday December 7^th 2009 07.05 

Hour	Day	Month	Year
water	fire	fire	earth
ren	bing	bing	gay
zhen	sute	tze	chou
dragon	dog	rat	ox

Month:	bing tze	the fire Rat
Solar Fortnight:	dau shuut	Great snow

Towards 2012: What to expect from the Metal Tiger

Richard Ashworth’s year forecast for 2010

 Notes: This is a summary of general trends divined from the ba zi of the Metal Tiger. Embarrassing errors are close to inevitable and no attempt has been made to be inclusive. Further personalised detail is available by arrangement.

Contact Sheila at: bazi@imperialfengshui.info.

 

2010 and 2011, The Run-Up to 2012.

It may be of course that the Mayans just ran out of ink. And if you think they were some race of prehistoric Nostradamus’ just remember that they actually stole their calendar and the accompanying astronomy from their smarter neighbours, the Toltecs.

Sticking strictly to the Chinese Cycles, iE ren zhen, the Water Dragon year 2012, actually mirrors other Water Dragon years such as 208BCE, the year of the unification of China as well as 32BCE which might be the year of the Crucifixion. The Water Dragon of 1412 saw the birth of Joan of Arc who united a whipped France behind her to victory over the invading English. She would be a Dragon, wouldn’t she? There’s no telling them a thing. Other Water Dragon years include 1592, the year of the first English colonies in America and 872 when Alfred (of cakes fame) unified England. These unifyings are probably the types of event to expect in 2012. I expect to be more specific as we get closer. Watch this space.

The Mayans, like the Chinese, thought in terms of a series of bigger and bigger years. For the Chinese the tai sui or great year is 12 years long and mirrors the orbit of Jupiter around the Sun which is a little under 12 Earth years. Our years – the Rat, Ox and indeed Tiger – are in effect months in the greater year. And this mega-year of twelve is itself a month in a bigger year again. If I have understood, the Mayans appear to have been suggesting the loss of two of these maxi-months which in a maxi-year of 144 Earth years amounts to 24 Earth years. They appear to be saying that the world is due to be closed from 2012 until 2036.

Perhaps we can look forward to a concerted response to Global warming. The next Chinese cycle or Fate actually opens in 2016 (or 2024 depending on which teaching you follow) and lasts until 2044 (on which feng shui Masters are agreed). This Fate is numbered 9 which represents both fire and authority. So if this means two decades of Global warming, we’ve got off lightly.

Meanwhile we have 2010 and indeed 2011 to get through. Now, as they say: read on.

Continued after panel.               

Tune Up for 2010 : Last year’s price for next year’s tune up.

 The Metal Tiger of 2010 is very different from the Earth Ox of 2009 and looks quite bleak in terms of what will be on the front pages of the papers. We don’t have to settle for that: we always have choice. Feng shui is doing the right thing in the right place at the right time. There are new places to activate for health, wealth and wisdom and new places to leave still in 2010. And some crucial tricks that must be done before February. We’re charging 2009’s price for 2010’s tune up if you book and pay in 2009. 

Contact Sheila at : admin@wingsagency.co.uk

Continued from before panel

 First, in case you don’t want to wade through my reasoning, here are some of the possible key events of 2010:

 Two Elections in the UK following hung Parliament in May.

• Russians cut off energy supplies in late winter.
• February: shortlived ASEAN bull market.
• February: second prong of W-shape recession. Property prices fall as unemployment rockets.
• February: New England spree killing
• February: atrocity NE Iraq and/or Afghanistan sets the tone for a year of reprisals. Worst year of American losses since 1973.
• Terrorist action in a UK garrison town.
• Police kettling disaster Tyneside or Deeside.
• Venezuela threatens American oil supplies.
• Mugabe sticky end mid-year.
• Politics enters football in a big way in the run-up to the World Cup. England makes it to the finals or semis but does not win. African nations fare better than expected.
• Osama bin Laden: betrayed by a friend or even a son, April-May 2010. Possible spectacular. And/or Something sudden in April.
• Proposed drastic UK education cuts modified after vigorous protest late spring, early summer.
• The Queen delegates to William, preparatory to abdication in 2013 after health scare.
• Obama back with a bang mid-Summer, a moment of special grace Sep 22^nd or so. Ratings bounce back in time for mid-terms following progress in Afghanistan. Congressional witch hunts.
• Banks attempt to throw off governmental controls; repossessions and foreclosures hit new highs.
• Strike action in the late autumn in the North.
• Earthquake and unrest in Assam hits the price of tea.
• Chinese Moslems introduce suicide bombers; authorities hit back remorselessly.
• Sudden stock market fall April.
• Controversial political imprisonment of a woman in March.
• Tottenham for Europe.
• Australian cricket in chaos, lose Ashes at home
• Food quality and pollution issues July South West.
• November: house market frees up. Some recovery. Aren’t you glad you read this far?

 Gung Yan, the Metal Tiger: Tigger or Shere Khan?

The Tiger, whose qualities include ferocity, patience, vision, rapid movement and long memory is the most feared Animal of the Chinese Zodiac. Many Chinese Masters are at pains to reassure students that the Tiger is not so scary after all which can come off like emphasising the positive aspects of a shark attack. 2010 looks like a formidable year. This is not to say that it can not be satisfying and enjoyable. You and I are each responsible for such choices in our lives. Furthermore in many (but not all) theatres of human activity one man’s loss is another’s gain.

The Tiger is not the most powerful of the Animals; that’s generally reckoned to be the Dragon. Nor is the Tiger the most respected (which is probably the Rat) the most outgoing (Horse) or even the greatest leader (Ox, like Barack Obama but also Hitler, Napoleon and Baroness Thatcher) It is however the Animal the Chinese diviner fears.

To gain some insight as to why, we need only consider that all Tigers are of the Wood element while this Tiger is the Metal variant. The underlying qualities of Wood are youth, movement and aspiration. The Tiger is motivated and unstoppable. The qualities of Metal are age, authority and conservatism. Metal is impassable. To possess both is to be seriously conflicted. Metal clashes Wood.

The Tiger is above all impatient. Tiger energy is visible in nature in the stirrings of early morning and the fresh growth of spring. In point of fact this is precisely how Chinese thinkers millennia ago, arrived at the theory of the Five Elements and ultimately the Year Animals; they observed them in nature. Metal is competitive rather than aspirational. Authority can bide its time but it will win by sheer cunning. Metal belongs to Autumn and the afternoon.

Let’s also emphasis that Wood qualities are not only visible early in the morning and at the quickening of the year but in the years 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986 and 1998 as well as in the character of those born in those years and times. Additionally, those born on a Tiger day (which you will only identify with a Chinese 10,000 year calendar*) are the most Tiger-like of all.  

So the Metal of 2010 is at odds with the Wood of the Tiger. It is the authority that the youthful Tiger natural opposes. It is the natural enemy of wood. Feng shui is the art of coincidence and the plight that Tiger Woods, the golfer whose name echoes the year, finds himself in is illustrative: is he a philanderer or a pillar of family values? It’s tough to be both. The Metal Tiger is an internally and externally conflicted creature. A trapped Tiger will chew its own claws off to escape. This beast is not at peace mostly because it is at war with itself.

* Which with typical Chinese hyperbole usually covers around 180 years.

 A Year of Escalated Conflict: Obama, Hawk or Dork?

An aspect of the Tiger is conflict between young men. The Tiger years of 1914 (commencement of WWI) and of 1854 (the year of the Charge of the Light Brigade) are extreme examples but it is likely that 2010 will see more rather than less war. Escalation of the occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan make this close to inevitable as do those in the Sudan and the Congo. Consult a map if you had forgotten these.

It will take time for the expanded forces to dig into Asia Minor and major losses are likely especially due South early in the Summer following opportunist sallies to the North. The tide does not turn until the autumn at which time Barack Obama may be branded permanently with the familiar reputation of visionary as well the unfamiliar one of hawk. The Chinook-like sound you will hear at Arlington Cemetery as each fresh body is consigned to its grave, is Lyndon Johnson spinning in his. Like you I could cry when I consider the lessons not learned.

There are five Tigers, one per Element. Since there are twelve distinct Animals that’s one Tiger every twelve years. Lyndon Johnson of course was only Vice-President during the escalation in Vietnam in the Tiger year of 1962 and a junior Senator when the Korean War opened in the previous Metal Tiger of 1950 but he was President when it all went out of control in the late 60’s. Expect an American presence in Afghanistan for at least as long as in Vietnam, possibly as long as West Germany.

Confrontation between young males will be also be expressed in some of the most serious student unrest since the early 70’s. Current university undergraduates are of course predominantly 1988 Dragons, 1989 Snakes and 1990 Horses. A student body dominated by Horses and Dragons will not take funding cuts lying down and might even alter the outcome.

A Year of  Financial Turmoil: the i-pod of the Tiger

As the Metal Tiger is marginally less fearsome than the Wood Tiger, so much of the year’s disturbance will probably be economic and social. Is that better or worse? Metal clashing Wood is accountancy taking precedence over Human Resources.

Expect strike action as unemployment figures take flight. There will be especial unrest in the South West of England and indeed in the Southern Mid-West of the USA but effective industrial action is limited to the North East. Any green shoots before November are likely to be the ones displaced manual workers come across digging their allotments to keep busy. This may lead to the rediscovery of small manufacturing as banks discover they can’t charge for money they haven’t lent and 30 years of Thatcherism gives way to a recognition of the need for  profitable employment for all – which may not simply mean jobs, by the way.    

Banks are generally considered to be Metal and this is a year in which the banks declare independence from government. Bank charges rocket and foreclosures proliferate. This is the second downward prong of the W-shaped recession. Property takes a further tumble along with other markets. The only relief is in sharp corrections spring and autumn followed by the first signs of recovery in November.

Manufacturing falls away worldwide as markets recede, especially in Metal sectors such as high tech. As in property there will be plenty of bargains but the moment to buy will remain hard to pick in the volatile climate.

The After Eight Mint: A Year of Weakened Government

One of the sharp market corrections – during the last burst of the Dragon month in the first week in May – probably coincides with the all-change of a UK General Election. But just as the opposite of love is not hate but indifference and the opposite of change not stability but stagnation, settled Labour government is followed by unsettled administration rather than a settled alternative. This echoes the last time Parliament was returned hung, in the Wood Tiger year 1974.

So the result of the spring Election is unlikely to be conclusive and may be followed by a further election in October. Minority and extremist parties over-achieve and turnout is dismal.

Esoterically 2010 is a lo shu 8 year. The current Fate (ie era) in Chinese terms is also 8. Accordingly 2010 typifies the era, so trends and tendencies are doubled up. Both Fate and year concern loyalties, consolidation and entrenched religious views.  

Along with a return to extremist politics comes a return to other fixed positions which serve only to demonstrate their own short shelf life.

This trend is reflected in China, India and Russia as well as the USA where rightwing groups once more confuse God with America and possibly apple pie. Sarah Palin’s following grows but fortunately for Obama the Congressional midterm elections fall at just the right moment. Some ideological purging follows.

In China the forces of democracy start to make real headway preparatory to breakthrough in 2012. Someone already in power backs the democratic movement. Tired of manufacturing the world’s gym shoes, the Chinese who boast a history of aesthetics going back three millennia, demand the right to design and imagine and express themselves safely. The question whether successful capitalism can co-exist with a repressive regime may be settled once and for all by 2013. Er….it’s a no.

 Continues after panel. 

The Next Two Feng Shui Diaries:

 Dated 22nd December: location by location, what to do where in order to be healthy, wealthy and wise in 2010.

Dated 7th January: An outline of the prospects for the year, Animal by Animal.

 Don’t miss next month’s thrilling instalment(s)

 Continued from before panel.

 The I of the Tigris

The Yang Metal of this Tiger is big Metal, powerful Metal. As noted earlier, the Metal of authority, of armies and generals as well as banks is ranged against the progressive aspiration of the Tiger.

Terrorist activity is indicated: Osama bin Laden is in the news in mid-year either because he is betrayed by an intimate, possibly (even a son) or because he is rumoured to be behind a major attack or both. In China, Islamic Fundamentalism goes militant and is not restricted to the South Western provinces. China responds with predictable harshness which may rebound.

In India there are major natural disasters as well as further insurrection. Trouble in Assam to the South East in the Spring may affect the price of tea just as similar forces in Africa impact on the price of Coffee. Starbucks’ look out!

The Russian administration underlines its own insecurity by threatening to close energy supply lines to the EU. The Russian voter shows just how unimpressed he is by anything other than wealth, in the elections that may follow which will tend to firm up ties with the West. It’s the economy, stupid.

Zero years are often years of aftermath: 1990 followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, 1970 the revolutionary 60’s, 1930 the upheaval of the Wall Street Crash. 2010 is more complex as governments attempt to compensate for the forced spending of the last couple of years while facing fresh liquidity challenges. Taxes rise along with real bank charges but not (at least at first) apparent interest rates. The stealth tax is fashionable again.

It’ll all be a lot more obviously joyous in 2011, tsun muw. 2011 is Zebedee, the Rabbit on a spring, who ought to be preceded by the equally bouncy Tigger but er…isn’t.

© Richard Ashworth 2009

 

Comfy seems to be the hardest word

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Friday November 22^nd 2009

Hour	Day	Month	Year
wood	metal	wood	earth
chia	tsun	gap	gay
wu	wei	hai	chou
horse	sheep	pig	ox

Month:	yute hoi	the wood Pig
Solar Fortnight:	siu shuut	Slight snow

Comfy seems to be the hardest word

The first big frost comes; late November. That is late indeed. For the first time this year we light an open fire. Sheila celebrates with a new Sky HD box. Now I can see every one of Tyra Banks’ eyelashes.

Mandy emails. Her husband appears to be back on the straight and narrow. They’ve sold the house, she tells me, the chicken image in the bathroom and the red envelopes at full moon respectively, have done their job. Mandy has not been herself recently. A straying husband can do that. When I saw her in the autumn this beautiful talented woman was bouncing off the walls with upset. I remind her that the cheapest feng shui advice is to ask what has been happening in the house you’re about to buy. Her vendor is a lady who is so like her it’s spooky. Just a little taller, she says.

“Her husband left her two years ago for her best friend,” she tells me.

I look at the house online. It’s l-shaped. Some call this a “hatchet” house and say this means it’s unlucky. Actually “Hatchet” is just the picturesque way a Master might help his student remember the configuration, what’s wrong with it is that the heart or tai chi, is outside. It is literally heartless. If you think about it, that is an inevitable feature of the l-shape. People tend not to care for each other in such homes.

This very smart woman talks of being chosen to heal the house. Who am I to argue?

“It’s 15^th Century. Is it possible everyone who has lived there down the centuries has been unhappy?”

I don’t tell her but I conjure in my mind the house I have seen that is most like this: l-shaped, mediaeval, with the front door inside the elbow, oh the things that Roger got up to when Marjory thought he was out jogging.

“Whatever we have to do,” Mandy says, “Pagoda, conservatory, porch, crystals. Whatever.”

The agents’ details show there is a millpond which looks all wrong too. The Shadows’ Wonderful Land comes up on my ipod and I am 10 years old staring across a lake in Pennsylvania in the endless summer of 1962. I blink it away.

If she’s hell bent on it, I agree that I will do what I can to change the house. Not for the first time, I wonder if this is weakness. I hate to make people frightened and sometimes I have to unsettle them but ultimately it’s all choice. This is the tao.

When I get back to my inbox there’s mail from Maggie, the healer who was featured in the last diary entry who tells me she prefers to be called Bernadette. Actually her name is Philena. Things are moving for her. She has just freed a young African from bad juju and acknowledges graciously that I had removed the African figures from her healing room in the nick of time. The young man is transformed to the astonishment of his friends. She asks me to print her web address which is www.philena.co.uk.  You don’t need to believe in any of this to know she’s a remarkable woman. 

Towards 2012: What to expect from the Metal Tiger

It may be of course that the Mayans just ran out of ink. And if you think they were some race of prehistoric Nostradamus’ just remember that they actually stole their calendar and the accompanying astronomy from their smarter neighbours, the Toltecs. The Mayans like the Chinese, thought in terms of a series of bigger and bigger years. For the Chinese the tai sui or great year is 12 years long and mirrors the orbit of Jupiter around the Sun of a little under 12 Earth years. Our years – the Rat, Ox and indeed Tiger – are in effect months in the greater year. And this mega-year of twelve is itself a month in a bigger ! year again. If I have understood, the Mayans appear to have been suggesting the loss of two of these maxi-months which in a maxi-year of 144 Earth years amounts to 24 Earth years. The world is due to be closed until 2036.

Sticking strictly to the Chinese Cycles, the year 2012 actually mirrors 208BCE, the year of the unification of China as well as 32BCE which might be the year of the Crucifixion; also 1412 when Joan of Arc was born. She would be a Dragon, wouldn’t she? There’s no telling them a thing. 1592 was the year of the first English colonies in America too. More of this in my predictions for the Metal Tiger which will be with you late in December.

Hoppen About

Then I’m at Kelly Hoppen’s for mulled wine and a sniff round; one of dozens, maybe hundreds. I can’t help pacing and orienting. Ms H is as always, frantically busy. Her office sits East-West. And so it should of course. There are some obvious things wrong about the building. You’ll know when she lets me tell her. That’s if she’ll let me tell you. That’s also if I ever get into her planner.

It’s raining as I leave and I’m weighed down with bags. I’m tempted to use the SatNav on my Blackberry to get me to Ladbroke Grove but I’m less likely to end up in Hartlepool if I follow my nose. On my way I pass the new Lutyens and Rubinstein book shop. It’s small and eccentrically-stocked: almost entirely without blockbusters. A lady (Ms. Lutyens? Ms. Rubinstein?) is talking very enthusiastically to a punter about trends in contemporary fiction that it is unlikely I will ever pick up on. The threshold is crowded. Twenty minutes feng shui would improve the outlook for the New Year but like the vampires in Buffy, I have to be invited.

On the train home I get an email from Govinda telling me the eczema that has been crippling her is almost gone. Some Icelandic mud, a dozen or so ba zi sessions, a feng shui survey and a great deal of bottle. Bless her.

Tune Up for 2010 : Last year’s price for next year’s tune up.

 Feng shui is sometimes defined as doing the right thing in the right place at the right time and the Metal Tiger of 2010 is very different from the Earth Ox of 2009. Between January 14th and February 4th Richard will be doing Tune-Ups for 2010 marking the new places to activate for health, wealth and wisdom and those to leave still as well as some crucial tricks that must be done before February. We’re charging last year’s price for next year’s Tune-Up if you book and pay now. That’s now!

 Contact Sheila at: admin@wingsagency.co.uk

Richard Ashworth © 2009

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

My (still) super-duper (still) revamped website is at www.imperialfengshui.info and my book The Feng Shui Diaries is available now from the website, online & in stores

High Spirits

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Friday November 7^th 2009 15.10

  

Hour	Day	Month	Year
fire	fire	wood	earth
bing	bing	yute	gay
shen	hoi	hoi	chou
monkey	dragon	pig	ox

Month:	yute hoi	the wood Pig
Solar Fortnight:	lap dung	Winter begins

High Spirits.

 I appear to have some early crocuses growing in the pot with the Hibiscus plant I rescued from the frost in October. There’s a metaphor for you.

Maggie is a psychic healer and she’s tired. As I walk into her top floor apartment I am struck both by how small it is and the power of the energy. There are sacred symbols all over the place: Norse Gods, Buddhas, Kwan Yin, the whole Hindu pantheon. Many are what she later calls “alive”. Clutter schmutter; the whole place is alive.

On her wall is a family tree.

“Goes back to the 8^th century,” she tells me.

It starts with Vikings; some pretty interesting Vikings, including Somerled, the first Lord of the Isles and some very distinguished Normans. I point out that her ancestor Simon de Montfort invented democracy as we know it in the Wood Ox year of 1265. It was de Montfort who called the Barons’ Parliament, some fifty years after Magna Carta. Although he took the precaution of kidnapping the King (Henry III) the monarch’s son Edward, (later Edward I) stalked de Montfort and defeated and killed him at the Battle of Evesham. De Montfort’s genius was that he insisted not only that all the representatives at his parliament should be elected (which was a first) but also that the assembly included commoners. This invitation to burgesses or local grandees recognised that political power was passing from the landowners to trade and virtually invented the Middle Class that is so generously represented in her family tree.

“Are you taping this?” Maggie asks in a voice that sounds a little strict. She used to be a Maths teacher.

“Er.. yes. Okay.”

 “How do you know all this?”

“I’ve been following my nose so long, I usually know what I need to know when I need to know it,” I say. “I just find this stuff so interesting.”

“Me too,” she says.

Some of the holy figures feel contrary: I recommend she jettisons several African ones which are resentful. Resentment is not her poison. In the East corner is an unambiguous Kali in the birthing position. While Maggie writes, I negotiate awhile with Kali and I leave her a devotional haematite. You don’t mess with Kali.

The building was part of the development of a parcel of land sold by a titled family in1866. From my standpoint most of the house is still in 1866 as no serious refurbishment has taken place. This means that the building’s natal chart dates from Fate 1 which started in 1864: the house is itself pretty tired.

The Chinese divide time up into Fates of 20 years (approximately or precisely, depending on the teaching you follow) This means that the pockets of energy as well as being a little dilapidated may be in either their 1866 or their 2009 locations or both. Maggie’s flat hovers between the Fates: the front room is untidy and as cluttered a place as I have been in but it’s a wonderful healing space. The 8 Fate which runs from 1996 puts the healing Mountain Star here so this figures.

Somebody once told me that feng shui is 90% housework. He was mistaken.

My inclination is to lift and sort and define, even hoover. But that would be all wrong. There is a lattice of benevolent energies running from figure to figure, altar to altar, crystal to crystal which I’m not about to disrupt. What I must do is find precisely those spots which when activated will help her. There is a wonderful uplifting place by the French windows that lead out onto the terrace to the South West. It is presided over by the Egyptian deities, Anubis, Isis and Sekhmet. The Chinese call such a hot spot a xue or pearl. There’s a trick we can do here with water.

“Isis adopted me,” she says. I can see that.

We agree to place water in the South West at a specified moment before the change of year so as to help Isis and the others bring Maggie company. Feng shui is doing the right thing in the right place at the right time and without intervention the South West isn’t going to be so great next year. This trick which will convert the dud South West to fruitfulness in 2010 must be done before February. There is a perfect moment shortly before that. All my retainer clients will know this moment in good time as will all those for whom I do an annual tune up before February 4^th.

In Maggie’s flat the Plum Flower or Irresistible Star in the West can be co-opted in the New Year too. We will place a rose quartz bowl next to Osiris. In the bowl are a crystal heart and a small piece of moldavite.

“What are they for?” Maggie asks matter-of-factly.

“When you leave the flat, you take the heart. When you return you put it back.”

“Okay. And the moldavite?”

“When you find someone worth it, he gets the moldavite. Same rules.”

“And the frog becomes the prince?”

“Exactly.”

It’s great to meet someone at home with metaphor.

Maggie has done a lot of good work.

“Sometimes I heal misery and hurts, sometimes actual lumps and things. Hard to argue when those just disappear.”

I know it doesn’t work quite like that but she deserves to be happy.

“It’s actually best when I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I understand; I really do.

Maggie would like to do stand up comedy; not necessarily what you’d expect of the average psychic healer. I notice that she has a certain turn of phrase and recognises the absurd when she sees it.

Her charge of £80 an hour, for instance, is maddeningly indivisible by three. If a one hour session runs on by twenty minutes, she doesn’t know what to charge. So she aspires to £90, she tells me, because it divides by three. Her warmth and gentleness is hard to miss.

Maggie’s phone rings often. It clearly pains her to leave it but she lets voice mail take over out of deference to me. She is lonely, she tells me: partly because she is an unusual woman and partly because she has not bothered with relationship.

“I’ve never had much chance,” she says.

I remind her that this is no answer but she knows all that.

One of her gifts is a physical empathy: “If a feeling enters with them and I didn’t have it before, I conclude it must be theirs,” she says.

This of course is a powerful asset; we all want others to know how we feel. I know this territory and now I feel distress and it doesn’t belong to me. Dreadful sapping tiredness. I tell her.

“Mine,” she says and purses her lips. “I feel as if I am always on duty. I can’t stop. I have to make everything right, If I start I have to finish.”

“I understand,” I say. I really do.

It is one minute to four. There is silence. Then her clock, which chimes with the call of a different wild bird at each hour, howls. I have no idea which bird that is.

“Where is money?” she asks.

“The 8 Fate Water Star is at your bedroom window,” I say. We put Laxmi Goddess of wealth there, in a position that ties her in with the water in the front room. Meanwhile we activate the last of the South East energy for 2009 for further prosperity then the South for recognition; Maggie has a book coming out in 2010. I labour not to trip over things as I work. We place my customised cure of 9 objects here in the South: red, pointy, relevant, and bathed in light all day and at least three hours of darkness.

Money, love: no trick. Let’s get this show on the road.

Know the Metal Tiger. Know yourself.

Richard will be teaching ba zi again in 2010 : four weekends starting February.

Join us by contacting Sheila at : admin@wingsagency.co.uk

Richard Ashworth © 2009

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

Up, up and away

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Friday October 23^rd 2009 05.05 

Hour	Day	Month	Year
metal	metal	wood	earth
tsun	tsun	gap	gay
muw	chou	sute	chou
rabbit	ox	dog	ox

 

Month:	gap sute	the wood Dog
Solar Fortnight:	zeun gong	Hoar Frost descends

 Up, up and away.

In the streets there is outrage, civil disobedience, gun plots: Lucie’s out of X Factor. I’m in a gift shop in Haslemere where a sign boasts how fast their carrier bags deteriorate. The indulgent lady behind the counter shares a joke with me.

“Do they give awards for how crap your bags are?” I ask.

She appears amused: another day another, smart arse.

The door of the neighbouring shop is too close. It occupies two units and the door is in the first. There’s actually a closed-up door in the second unit. This configuration is called “long exit, short entrance” which is a terrible waste of chi. The openings need swapping around. They’d see an increase in turnover pretty much immediately. I’d be happy to take a percentage of the increase but I pass by; enough gratuitous offence for one day. As I pass, I notice that in his mob hat, the young guy behind the deli counter in Waitrose looks like Wallace out of Wallace and Gromit.

The X-Factor reference of course suggests that despite the date in Chinese above, I am writing early in November. It’s true. I am trying desperately to catch up. When I write precisely as the chi changes I can say things that are up to the minute but writing a diary every fortnight can be a big demand and usually by this time of year, as you will have noticed, I’m way behind which means I have to either short change you and skip a couple of fortnights or leave them out of sync. Or catch up of course. Thanks to my friend Suzanne for pointing this out; she works for one of those banks that usually only notice when there are eight zeroes instead of nine.

I go to a Jimmy Webb gig with reluctant advertising mogul Bob who knows everything about rock ‘n’ roll. Jimmy Webb who wrote Galveston, Wichita Lineman (million sellers for Glen Campbell) and McArthur Park among many others, is one of the greatest writers of popular song of the last century but he doesn’t actually sing that well. His own recordings of his songs are charming in a croaky sort of way but as he says:

“We wouldn’t be here today without Glen Campbell”, whose son by the way is on drums.

The band consists additionally of four of his sons and a friend. They share the vocals around. The boys sing peerlessly and the harmonies are sublime. One son Jamie (James L Webb II, I guess) has a high tenor a bit like Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys. You remember God Only Knows? When Jamie sings the 3^rd verse of Highwayman (as immortalised by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson) there is spontaneous applause. His father beams.

After the show I talk with Jimmy:

“You must be very proud of your sons.”

“Oh yes,” he says.

“That Jamie sings like an angel,” I say. “I have children who perform. It’s sort of great when they can do what you do better than you can.”

I watch for ego as he receives this multi-level compliment. There is none.

“Jamie’s working on Without You, (the Harry Nilsson hit)” he tells me. His face darkens a tad. “Harry was a dear friend, When Jamie sings it, it’s like Harry’s there.”

“Some serious upper range called for.”

“Exactly,” he says. “A Badfinger song of course.”

“Yes Tom Evans and Pete Ham,” I say looking in his eyes. Bob is mouthing this credit behind me, I think.

My daughter Jessie, the film star, by the way does fabulous ba zi.

Home is where the harp is.

Home: the phone rings.

Moira is a psychic. Broadly she does mediumship by phone from her little bungalow in the Marches. She has called for an auspicious date to move house. I tell her the 8^th or the 29^th November*. I’m just glad we’ve sold it. The bungalow was a hard one: positioned in what the Chinese call the “hairwashing location,” most of the way up a steep slope. Everything falls away to the valley floor apart from rain which drops so plentifully here on the edge of the Black Mountains that everything is wet most of the time. Water butts overflow and the paths are forever slippery.   

* These are the correct dates. Use this information as you will. Take it as an apology for the misleading timing of these diaries.

The first work I did for Moira was to clear her house of stuck energies. Some people call these energies “spirits” or “ghosts.” Which is just a question of choice. I prefer to talk of “energy” or chi because that gives me more options. Once we’ve decided it’s your Gran or Napoleon Bonaparte, the options become limited.

There is always plenty of stuck energy around Moira of course. A fortnight after I cleared the bungalow, she rang to tell me that business had gone suddenly very slack. Her new house will be on the NW/SE orientation I recommended, away from sharp inclines.

“I’m glad,” I say.

“You’ll have to come and look at it when I’m settled,” she says.

“Of course.”

Tea Lights and Cheese.

Next day I visit Deb on the Derbyshire-Cheshire border, cheese country. I wonder idly how far Wensleydale is. We spend a hard day positioning the front door very precisely in the North West. It has been in the West for a century and I could write a book on how wrong that is for this house. Her husband Sam is respectfully sceptical. I like that. The only sensible approach to anything is the floating vote isn’t it? He wants evidence. So after suggesting they move a huge cattle trough in the vulnerable North East as soon as possible and ensuring they know where to put water to avoid a plague of boils I ask them to buy some tea lights.

We place one due South, one to the South East and one to the North West.

“Keep these alight all day and for at least three of the hours of darkness, until December 5^th*.” I tell them, “I’m expecting you to notice an increase in opportunities.”

“Do I need to be clear what I want?” he asks.

Good feng shui does not actually depend on whether you believe in it, agree with it or even know it’s going on. Watch this space.

“Not especially,” I say. “Just be sure to use the breaks as they arise. I can get the ball to the penalty spot but you need to kick it.”

As she drives me to Macclesfield Station, we talk about Deb’s Dad. Her ba zi shows that their relationship is kun/choi, which you might call “attack”. It’s certainly been turbulent; he may not be seeing his grandchildren this Christmas.

* This is real too. And discussion of the North East from anyone who knows a bit about the subject is very welcome.

 “It looks like you win,” I say.

“You’ve got me going,” she says, “Just like that.” Her eyes are full of tears but she looks only at the road. “Never seems that way to me.”

“Through the prism of the tao,” I say gently. “Everything is its opposite. Often when we simply change the pronouns, we see what might really be going on. My own father by the way, appeared to me to be a very difficult man. He was admirable in many ways but I seriously doubt I could do what I do if he were still alive. His sneer within me was too much. He thought I blamed him for all sorts of things. I didn’t. But I declared myself competent to charge grown-up money for feng shui the day he died.”

She is quiet but she is gripping the steering wheel very tight.

“So when I think he is attacking me, I see it as my attack on him?”

“Yes.”

More tears.

“Never seems that way.”

She is quiet again.

“Yes I can see that.”

I know how much courage that takes and although my book the Feng Shui Diaries comes with a health warning (Caution: this man may make you cry.) I never take this for granted. I see tears shared with me as a gift and a privilege.

“Just make sure that when the ball comes onto the penalty spot you kick it.”

It’s a long train ride home: by Virgin Pendolino, the grown up’s Vampire Ride, to Euston, then across town to Waterloo, a commuter train to Haslemere and a short drive.

The fact is that when Lucie Jones hit the word “stay” in My Funny Valentine, it was the single most powerful moment in the whole series of the X Factor. Watch it on youtube. Only someone with no feeling for music could miss that. After drilling all those hiccupping grace notes into legions of impressionable hopefuls, I guess those judges can no longer hear singing.

I refuel on my way home. On the pump they are advertising coffee.

“Grande latte for the price of a medium,” it says. I don’t even know what Moira charges.

 Richard will be teaching ba zi again in 2010 : four weekends starting February.

Stop Press : Book of Changes Day Saturday November 28th

It’s the oldest book in the world and it’s at the heart of every aspect of Chinese Culture: from cookery to kung fu, from Ken Hom to Yuen Hom. Richard will be hosting a day long introduction: Opening the Book of Changes. Learn how to consult the oldest oracle in the world and how to make sense of the answers. No knowledge of feng shui required. 

Join us by contacting Sheila at : admin@wingsagency.co.uk 

Richard Ashworth © 2009

Opening the Yi: A day of introduction to The I Ching or Book of Changes

Opening the Yi:

A day of introduction to The I Ching or Book of Changes

with Richard Ashworth

Saturday 28^th November 10am to 6pm

The Oldest Book in the World.

The Book of Changes or Yi Jing, is at least three thousand years old. Often referred to in the West as the I Ching, it is generally considered the oldest book in the world and is probably more central to Chinese Culture than a combination of Shakespeare and the Bible to ours: interesting attributes for what is essentially a book of divination.

What do we mean by divination? We mean perhaps something like finding answers to our deepest questions by some route other than logic. A similar approach is used in both feng shui and ba zi and no serious practitioner of these arts can safely remain ignorant of the Yi.

All traditional Chinese culture derives from the Book of Changes. Cookery, Martial Arts, Medicine, Calligraphy, Literature, Music. It is quite a statement but the fact is that there are no exceptions to this.

Answers to our deepest questions.

On the 28^th we will look at the history of the Yi and its origins in the attempts of the diviners of the Zhou Dynasty to give the Emperor an edge with advice that could be gained no other way. In those days what was needed were answers to questions like “Should we attack or tolerate our neighbours?” and “Can we rely on the river to flood on time?” Today we are more likely to ask what will happen if we quit our job or risk committing to a relationship but the Yi is still the best resource for the “What if?…” question. It is like having a wise and ancient best friend to consult.

An Introduction to Interpretation.

We will explore the various ways of consulting the Yi: coins or yarrow sticks? Mei Hua or Na Jia or some other method? How do we interpret? How do we know we’ve got it right? How can my interpretation be as good as Confucius’? How do I use the Yi in ba zi, in feng shui, in my daily life?

What do I get?

Participants will emerge with the skill to consult the Yi and at least the beginnings of how to interpret. No deep knowledge of Chinese culture is required but an enquiring spirit and an open mind is essential. 

Location: Castle Street Clinic,Castle Street,Guildford,Surrey.

Price: £150 or £100 to my students.

Information/Registration: fengshui@wingsagency.co.uk

or visit Richard’s website: www.imperialfengshui.info

 © 2009 Richard Ashworth

The South Downs and this time it’s personal

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Thursday October 8^th 2009 12.15

Hour	Day	Month	Year
wood	fire	wood	earth
gap	bing	gap	gay
ng	sute	sute	chou
horse	dog	dog	ox

Month:	gap sute	the wood Dog
Solar Fortnight:	hohnlow	Cold Dew

The South Downs and this time it’s personal.

At this time of year, the Dog month, in this case a wood Dog, the Sun is so much lower. If I start early in the morning I have to close my curtains against the glare. The hibiscus is in bloom, the tomatoes have given up – perhaps a little late – but otherwise apart from riots, earthquakes, political extremism, suicide bombers, recession and global warming, all’s right with the world.

I like the Dog month. It’s a big statement but all Dogs are loyal in their way and the balanced Dog is totally consistent; his soufflés turn out the same every time. October is a steady month and the Dog is a universal symbol of steadfastness. On mediaeval livery it meant that the noble house concerned thought of itself as embodying loyalty (or more likely demanded it).

There are of course five different Dogs. The Water Dog (1982) brings back the pigeon. The Fire Dog (1946/2006) sits by the hearth, the Metal Dog’s (1970) bite is worse than his bark. The Earth Dog (1958) is the most loyal of all. But the Wood Dog (1994/1934) is a confused Dog, the mutt who chews his own paws. Like this month. The last wood Dog year was 1994 and before that 1934; those born in those years are known for digging deep into their resources.

Cricket Alert: this is not a drill.

If you’re a cricket buff (which my typical reader isn’t but I am, so tough) 1934 is the year of bodyline. Faced with the unbeatable Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest batsman the game has produced, the English captain Douglas Jardine devised a way to beat the Australians. He came up with bodyline or leg theory which basically meant the batsman had to defend the ball off his body before he could score. Some called it intimidation. Some said it wasn’t cricket. They were mostly Australian. It was so effective that the rules were changed. Jardine’s team trounced the Australians soundly and he lost his job and demon bowler Harold Larwood never played for England again. I used this information to correctly predict the Ashes result in 2005 and 2009 by the way.

Clive Lloyd who captained the unbeatable West Indians of the 70’s followed the same strategy throughout the 70’s and 80’s with great success and little criticism. Go figure.

Across the world, it was in the Dog year of 1934 that Hitler whose party had commanded less than 10% of the vote in 1929 now controlled the Army and the Trade Unions and had suspended all other political parties. An extraordinary time as political extremism followed recession followed stock market crash. Sound familiar?

The years since 1989 for a variety of reasons, echo those between 1919 and 1939. Recessions lead to extremist views. Most people need someone to blame. If I haven’t got a job it’s easy to pin it on foreigners. The ones with head scarves and burkhas are the easiest; Poles aren’t that easy to spot.

Next month a wood Pig, then a Fire Rat and we move into the year of  the ferocious Metal Tiger, a precarious time. I’ll tell you about that in my predictions in 8 weeks or so. Watch this space.

Ladybirds, Beatles and other bugs.

We’re visiting my daughter Henni at Sussex University today. I tell her how much we’ve missed her.

“There’s been a serious lack of hysteria and random behaviour.”

“Random?!” she says, four foot ten of fiercely assertive young woman. “You’re a fine one to talk.”

And she’s beautiful and brilliant but I would say that, wouldn’t I?

The university campus is purpose-built. The halls of residence surround the academic buildings like a wagon train. Sussex has a reputation for producing graduates with well-grounded radical ideas and it feels both safe and exciting. I could get lost in the book shop and actually nearly do. This place feels great.

Feng Shui is wind and water. The wind carries the chi down from the mountain and it accumulates by the water as the Book of Rites has it. One of the main tricks of feng shui has always been controlling the wind. If you walk among the mountains – luan tou – out in the wilds of central China with a Chinese Master, he will take you to still plateaus where the chi is perfectly settled. These are the most powerful locations of all.

Sussex University however is in a bowl between the South Downs and the Sea. Being close to the sea. the wind is an issue. What they have done is to shelter the campus by building on the ridges. So the University itself is still and the walkways and roads are placed so that there are no roaring wind canyons. Nor is there what a feng shui master would call heaven chop: when the gap between two buildings is too small relative to their height. Many feng shui masters attributed 9/11 to heaven chop*.

* Ask me if you want justification for this especially outrageous assertion.

Here at Sussex they have contained the wind so the chi on this fortunate North-South axis is settled. Nestling on the slopes are the halls of residence, contained in the valley, the theatres, classes and lecture halls.

Henni has hibernating ladybirds in her room. She asks what this means.

“Good fortune. You get cochineal from ladybirds. Cochineal crimson is the default good-luck colour.”

“Not so lucky if they’re nesting over your bed,” she says with matter-of-fact contention.

“And Ladybird fashions, of course,” I say, risking my life.

We arrive home and Jess and Joey are playing Beatles Rock Band. Jessie sings “Twist and Shout,” Joey plays bass. Fifty years on the Beatles still own the run-up to Christmas. And Henni will be home on the 12^th December. 

Richard will be teaching ba zi again in 2010 : four weekends starting February.

Stop Press : Book of Changes Day Saturday November 28th

It’s the oldest book in the world and it’s at the heart of every aspect of Chinese Culture: from cookery to kung fu, from Ken Hom to Yuen Hom. Richard will be hosting a day long introduction: Opening the Book of Changes. Learn how to consult the oldest oracle in the world and how to make sense of the answers. No knowledge of feng shui required.

Join us by contacting Sheila at : wingsagency@hotmail.com

 Richard Ashworth © 2009

The North West Frontier

Solar fortnight beginning:

Tuesday September 23^rd 2009 05.59

Month:                                 quai yuw        the water Rooster

Solar Fortnight:               bak low           White Dew

The North West Frontier

On the train home I listen to Buffy St Marie’s Universal Soldier which does me in every time. Full blood Cree Indian, late 60’s, 1^st in Oriental philosophy, sexy as hell. What an extraordinary woman. For your information, her ba zi makes her a Metal Snake with yang water day stem and what is called a triple fire combination. In English that means unstoppable. She was married to Jack Nietzsche who worked with Phil Spector and Neil Young: as complex a man as those associations suggest. And she wrote the cheesy feelgood anthem “Up Where We Belong.” Go figure.

Moving from Cree Indian to Liver Bird, I’m on my way back from Warrington. Until now I only knew it for vodka and Rugby League.

I’m concerned about Karl. He’s been unhappy with his business partners as long as I‘ve known him which is several years. Last week he asked me whether he should move on.

“I don’t give nuts and bolts advice,” I told him. Then I asked a series of questions to help him get clear. He wanted to be fair to everyone concerned which was of course commendable. All the clients would follow him and he wasn’t sure that was ethical.

Ethical (as opposed to moral) is simply what works. Yukio Mishima said that ethics and beauty were the same thing.

“Do what feels right for you. There are no absolutes. Whoever said all’s fair in love and war was probably at war more than he was in love but you have to look after yourself. Just don’t bend yourself out of shape. Your natural integrity will guide you.”

Then a week later he texted to ask me when would be a good time to give his notice.

“Today’s the day,” I replied knowing the power of that particular day in the Chinese calendar: Dong Gong Five Star which I know sounds more like a restaurant than an auspicious date. I could almost see the gulp in his next text. He texted several more times that afternoon then gave his notice. As I said, I don’t give nuts and bolts advice and he is responsible for his own life but I have been kind of holding my breath anyhow.

I look at two houses in Warrington in as many days with a stopover at the Ramraider, Haydock where they serve a fine scrambled egg.

Christine has asked me to look at her son Tom’s house and then hers. She’s 50-something and looks great on it. She was concerned, she told me, not to interfere in her son’s life.

“A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do,” I told her.

They pick me up from the station. Tom’s driving: a newish BMW with a personalised plate. A wave of distress hits me.

“Nausea, dizziness,” I say. It’s not mine.

“What do you mean?” he asks, puzzled.

“I don’t know yet.”

This stuff usually means something. Perhaps not today. He’s facing redundancy with a pregnant wife. Perhaps the nausea is hers. Perhaps it’s his. I felt it in the train on the way up but then it was a Virgin Pendolino, the grown-up’s roller coaster.

They banter. It’s a nice relationship. Christine’s constantly not being the bull in the China Shop she knows herself to be. He rearranges the china with good humour anyway. And she’s a very warm bull.

It will turn out that both houses are on the same orientation. On the face of it Tom’s is very different. It’s a town house on a smart new estate. Christine’s is a nice but boxy 60’s semi. His is trying to face North West which speaks of Father trouble. Hers clearly backs onto the North West. But the fact is they’re facing the same way. The North West is about authority and getting things done as well as the literal father. So this is what to look out for. We drive to Tom’s first. It is built on top of an old US Airforce Base.

I walk around the outside. Very respectable, very flat. Inside it’s on three floors and spectacularly neat. Sometimes people tidy ahead of me: like cleaning before the help arrives. Not Tom and Shampa. Both work in healthcare. She is a highly qualified consultant. He is qualified too but he sells pharmaceuticals.

“It’s always like this,” he says.

Tom has sent a challenging letter to his employers who appear to have got the procedure all wrong. I think he’d prefer his job back. He’s hurting but I don’t think he knows it. He’s a very bright man determined to be open minded; at one point the sheer strain of this sends him to sleep on the couch while I draw up the chi map. To be fair, drafting’s not much of a spectator sport.

There are a number of ways of deciding which way a house faces. Principally the side that is higher is the back and the side that faces the most lively direction is the front. If these two aspects are in agreement then it’s straightforward. This by the way has little to do with where whatever they may call the front door is. Christine’s will turn out to be higher at the back and easier to read. Tom’s is level but the symbols with which my Chinese compass measures this stuff say the garden is the facing direction and the symbols or kuas get the casting vote.

There is an aquarium mounted on the wall in the front room: North West. Two demerit points:

1. Major no-no to place water in the North West. North West is metal and water weakens metal. The North West, as I said represents the powers-that-be and it may well be that redundancy is their way of expressing upset. And Fathers.

2. The aquarium is full of water but there are no fish in it. Not that fish are important in feng shui – they’re just one way of keeping water alive – but it’s a neglected sort of aquarium that hasn’t got any.

I potter round and find things to work with. Tom’s desk backs onto the window of his little office and he can’t see the door from there. The metaphor is that things happen behind his back. Sudden redundancy might be one. Worse, this room with its nasty flying stars is a very poor choice for his office. I direct him to the other end of the house where the stars are nicer and turn him around to face the door.

Shampa comes home. She has been nauseous again although she’s in the third trimester. She is worried about her father and both of her (female) neighbours. Hmmmm. I get a feeling of a real closeness with them.

Christine evicted Tom’s father when Tom was little. He and Tom have recently started speaking again. Hmmm. Shampa is at pains to emphasise that she has no issue with her own father but she’s worried about him. What an eloquent aquarium this is proving to be.

“We’re a very sporty family. We do lots of stuff together; tennis, badminton, gymnastics. Now he can’t play.”

Her girl friends on either side both have life-threatening illnesses and both have been suffering nausea. Aha. Nausea. The 7^th month of pregnancy is no time to be fretting about your support system.

“I worry about my Dad. I guess I know a little too much. Probably a trapped nerve.”

I recommend they place water outside in the South East and something heavy, a statue say, in the North West. This turns the front into the back and vice-versa.

One of the ailing neighbours has just split with her husband.

“A woman marries her father or she doesn’t,” I say gnomically.

“And I know she had a terrible time with her father,” Shampa tells me.

If I’m right, turning the house around allows the father to embrace and support. Tom may prefer that to trading pedantic letters. What he needs is to take a risk. His ba zi suggests success coming up but he’s going to have to stick his neck out or he could waste it. He is prone to justifying himself which will tend to keep him stuck. We are all 100% right in the privacy of our own heads.

Christine’s house is a breeze by comparison. One way of looking at a house is to simply see it as the body. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen back pain go as soon as a sagging rear fence post has been replaced. Christine has a prosthetic knee. Precisely where the left knee should be if her head were at the apex of the roof, is an ugly overhang between the attached garage and the kitchen which breaks up the outline of the house. The overhang is at the East which often represents bones and joints as well as the eldest son. In effect the eldest son is missing. Tom is not the eldest son. That would be Terry who has been in France for a decade. Interessant.

“Extend out here,” I suggest.

We look at the North where the attached garage juts out.

“I don’t think it’s part of the house. If it were it would signify 2^nd son sticking his neck out which is exactly what we want.”

“What do we do?” Christine asks.

“Bring it into the house. Turn the whole garage into a room so it’s included and extend beyond the overhang.” A big picture window will bring in that fabulous eastern light. And the existing kitchen door becomes the connection between new room and house.

What really agitates Christine who has spent all this money on me largely for her son’s welfare, is that her partner of 20 years still lives elsewhere.

“Is there anything you can do?”

“I expect so.”

As we talk I notice that she has a quite prominent vaccination scar. Her ba zi suggests care with metal.

“How are you with acupuncture?” I ask.

“Gives me the creeps,” says this very wise woman.

“And vaccinations?”

She puts her whole hand round the upper arm where the mark is.

 “Don’t start. It was a nightmare.”

The outline of the house is missing a chunk of North West and the trees here at the back have been drastically cut back. North West, father and the place where things get rubber stamped: exposed and vulnerable. She talks of her own father and cries softly. North West means all mature men. So that includes her boyfriend.

“Feels odd calling a man of 58 my boyfriend.”

We replace the North West with a statue. Like the related operation at Tom’s house this affects the doors. External water and statues affect what is called the chi form. Reversing Tom’s house has attracted metal chi form which is competitive and acquisitive, the sort of thing he wants. But clearly a woman who shies from needles has different needs. I place water for her in the East where it will receive gentler chi. This is what is called yang wood form. Yang wood thrusts upward and is shaped like a cylinder, a pillar, Cleopatra’s needle. You get the picture: like those old movies when you know the hero and heroine are getting up close because the screen is filled with towers going up and tides going out. It feels like the house wants this.

“How long before we see a difference?” Tom asks.

“Some immediate, some a little longer. I’ve concentrated on success and Dads which are pretty much the same thing.”

As I turn my phone on at the station I see that Karl has reported back.

“All my clients are staying with me and I’ve got a whole load of new work in Germany. More than I can handle.”

“You’re exceptionally good at what you do,” I text back. And breathe again. I don’t want to be plausible, I want to be right. 

Richard will be teaching ba zi in 2009 : the four weekends start in February. The Early Bird offer is still open.

Stop Press: Book of Changes Day 28th November. A One-day Opening of the Book of Changes.
Contact Sheila: admin@wingsagency.co.uk
Richard Ashworth © 2009

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

My (still) super-duper (still) revamped website is at www.imperialfengshui.info and my book The Feng Shui Diaries is available now from:

Amazon  

Waterstones

 

Love, honour and e-bay

Solar fortnight beginning:

Tuesday September 7^th 2009 20.51

Month:  Quai yuw, the water Rooster

Solar Fortnight: Bak low, White Dew

Love, honour and e-bay.

I’m looking at my Facebook page which is linked to my blog which is linked to my twitter which is linked to my website. This means you could follow me online for hours without actually learning anything new.

Sally’s page tells me she doesn’t believe the local authority is recycling her recycling. She reckons that if they are collecting tins, plastic and paper together in a single bin, they can not be separating it and she has heard rumours of tankers loaded with tidily bundled Home Counties cardboard and washed dog food cans ending up unrecycled in central China. It’s a paranoid time and she uses her long Facebook status updates to reflect this. They are not nearly as much fun as 10-year-old Mark’s; he is a client of Sheila’s whose every day is either FANTASTIC!!!!!!! or BOR-ING! Mine too, Mark.

Laxmi is back from Iceland where I sent her for mud therapy when all else had failed. The eczema which has been rampant since she was three is retreating nicely. There was more to it of course – a survey and six weeks of ba zi – but there she is in the new pictures with fresh soft skin. A fire-metal imbalance since you asked.

I’m looking at Charlie’s converted barn in Oxfordshire. Charlie’s led a charmed life in some ways: he’s 50-something, handsome, fit, single and the possessor of the rump of the fortune he made on the stock market in the 90’s. He’s a very smart man and he’s going out with a beautiful musician who doesn’t need him on tap at all times. I’m reminded of Susan in Desperate Housewives pointing out to her young lover that he has it pretty good: “Hot sex whenever you like and no cuddling.”

He’s a Metal Rabbit. I once did a whole radio phone-in on this Rabbit. The Rabbit is soft and gentle yin wood but the attached yin metal is fierce and acquisitive. Metal attacks wood, so this is a confused beast. Often such a person doesn’t know whether to be in business or the world of woo-woo. When they’re making millions they want to withdraw and when they withdraw they want better hotels.

Yin metal is often music and he’s a big rock’n’roller so we immediately have plenty to talk about. In fact this means I have to concentrate on surveying rather than discussing Paul Simon.

The orientation of the house is fine but what’s interesting about it is that the lay-out of the house suits it so well. There are missing bits at West and North but the Flying Stars absent from these pockets are pretty nasty and this is not one of those houses where missing bits banjax the whole thing. Charlie’s been feeling a bit philosophical of late and I point out that his sons, who are away at boarding school or with their mother most of the time, occupy the best location for an office while he has been working – a tad reluctantly – among some sluggish stars. I suggest a straight swap.  

“How will that affect the boys?”

“Not that much, I expect. Unless they move in.”

Hm…I detect some guilt. Charlie is a brilliant and therefore perhaps complex man but guilt is only permission to repeat offend. I have six children and have been doomed to learn so much the hard way so I may be familiar with the territory. My father used to say of being a parent that the first forty years were the hardest

My daughter Henni is at her new Uni now and her Facebook tells me she has Freshers’ Flu. This appears to mean she hasn’t been sober all week. She is a diligent and independent girl with a fine mind and I don’t worry about her. Not in this regard at least.

Crouching Tiger, Rampant Rabbit.

Charlie is encyclopaedic about 70’s singer-songwriters and he has been studying Tantric Sex. How interesting. I am full of questions. Topic after topic occurs to me: Tom Waits and Pete Atkin, Dory Previn and The Handsome Family. My readership, I guess, may have other concerns but it turns out Charlie is a Graham Nash obsessive. I have never met one before: Crosby, Stills, Young, yes: not Nash.

To get the maximum benefit from the water star (sometimes called the money spot) he needs water outside in the East but he can’t place it till 2010 because the East is tricky until then. Why would this picture of contentment need water? He’s kind of lonely. What do you do for the man who has everything? Identify what’s really missing. This is the tao. This Rabbit is stuck for a direction and where he’s pointing looks unsatisfying. That’s his business but I can open up the options for him.

There are large doors either end of the barn and he asks if the chi doesn’t blow through. Evidently not.

“You have a spiral staircase between them.”

And no, not the sort of spiral staircase that twists the energy; this one is fine. It doesn’t turn back on itself. As I said, he is charmed. But there is a darkness, something like boredom in this man who only works in order to avoid the school fees eating into his capital.

His ba zi suggests that this decade he could make significantly more than last decade. The elements showing are the same but yang (that is bigger) as opposed to the yin of the last decade.

“Looks like you’re up for moving and shaking,” I say to this deeply spiritual man whose attention is on the search for truth. What do I know?

We place items to the missing West and North which represent respectively the youngest daughter and the second son. These are the children he is concerned about. Who’d have thought it? And his ex who’s represented to the South West by a door that is never opened. This by the way ensures that another poor pocket of energy is effortlessly neutralised. Charmed.

My ipod selects Del Amitri’s Driving with the Brakes on as I drive away

Glittering, Korea.

Anita emails me for a second appointment. She’s had tenant trouble and I’ve been helping her free herself of them in, of course, the nicest possible way. Tenant gone, can we start again? She is a fantastically smart Korean banker. Two weeks ago she was in a real pickle, now she’s cool as er… a cucumber. Moving away from condiment metaphors, I compare the 60’s concrete of her big house to a Stalin block and she sees the similarity. Her unwanted guest was of course a reflection of a whole raft of inner conflict reflected in her ba zi. Koreans like the Irish, are often somehow themselves divided across the middle.

Since I surveyed the other week, two huge opportunities have emerged for her: one about fame, the other pure wealth. All in a day’s work, ma’am.

I end the week fetching and carrying around Sheila’s Workshop for young actors. They are brilliant; I stop and watch a little of the videoing as they practise for big auditions. My daughter-in-law Tracey who is a world class teacher of young actors, puts in a cameo appearance. This means I have her two little boys, my grandsons, for the afternoon and we go to the park where I bump into a client.  We discuss the forthcoming Year of the Metal Tiger while I push Levi James Ashworth (three and three quarters) on the swing.

My client tells me casually about a Private Equity fund that is involved in dumping lethal waste in China. I don’t think I’ll be telling Sally.

“I’ve seen the future and it looks like murder,” I say.

“W-shape recession?” he enquires.

“Uh huh. The Metal Tiger is a vicious beast,” I say. “The year the banks get their own back.”

He of course, works for one.

“How?”

“Repossessions, foreclosures. They want never again to be beholden to government.”

“Is that all bad?”

“We don’t have to buy in,” I say, “All that there is, is either good or a mistake.” This is in fact a quotation from A Course in Miracles.

“You ready to deal in cash?” he asks.

Richard Ashworth © 2009

info@imperialfengshui.info

 Names have been changed to protect..uh…me. My (still) super-duper (still) revamped website is at www.imperialfengshui.info and The Feng Shui Diaries the book is available now from:

Amazon

Waterstones

And of course all good bookshops. Do buy it from a bookshop if you can.

All manner of things shall be well.

Solar fortnight beginning:

Sunday August 23rd 2009 08.35

Month: Yum Shen, The Water Monkey

Solar Fortnight:  Chu Shu, Limit of Heat

All manner of things shall be well.

Alice wants me to look at her new house in a hurry. Actually I didn’t know she had moved.

It’s the metal season now. The fire of summer but for a brief sharp spit that will come in mid-October, is gone. Although it seems like only a few days since the branches were bare, leaves are already browning and the tomatoes relishing the late summer sun, are finally turning red. Seems like a typical English summer, a tad wet maybe. When I was a boy it seemed to be hot from April to October. Then I thought the summer lasted forever. Now many experts predict that wet summers will become the norm.

Not James Lovelock. Now 91, Lovelock suggests, in his Gaia books, that there is nothing much to be done about global warming. What we have to do, he says, is adjust. We’re going to have to rethink. For decades everything has been getting faster, bigger, easier and more disposable. This may be about to change. Since Darwin we have thought of the passing of time as the same thing as progress. It isn’t. I look at the dinky little cardboard chips that come with my new phone and wonder when these will become so valuable they are fought over.

Which raises another question. How is it that with universal computerisation everything is instantaneous but it still takes three days for a bank credit to show on my account?

As I get into the car to drive to Alice’s new house only a couple of miles from my own, Rajul emails, shaken by a vision of his long dead mother.

“She was beckoning me to join her,” he says.

“Unusual energy this week,” I reassure him. “The veil between the worlds is especially thin. Treat it as a privilege.”

I arrive at Alice’s house which I can see right away is a very poor choice. Why didn’t she contact me before choosing this turkey? These days most Estate Agents put property and orientation online and I can glean what I need to know in minutes; it would have been a moment’s work.

She is waiting out on her driveway for me. Just as well I’m on time. I park and scold her. It’s a sunny day and a light wind plays across the grass. Her compact front lawn is bordered by a fence with open slats. The wind rushes through them.

“You need a Dragon’s Claw,” I tell her.

“Dragon’s Claw?”

“Something to hold the energy. That fence wants to be 4 feet high minimum and the gaps between the slats filled in.”

I guide her eye across the neighbour’s lawn.

“That’s not much better, The fence is just as flimsy. But look there,” I add, pointing two doors away.

The next door neighbour but one has a solid fence on two sides and the garden is rich with flowers, the grass a deeper green.

“They’re getting yours, ” I tell Alice.

We measure the orientation of the house; it’s SW-NE. This is stubborn but a healthy change from her last one where all the trouble was in the North West. The North West means Daddy stuff and that property had a huge shed in the NorthWest full of her father’s tut. She works for him too. And at that time she was at her wit’s end with her partner. That improved. Now that she has moved, she is frantic again. Not a great house, as I said.

Throughout her childhood her parents were on the edge of breaking up. She weeps softly as she tells me. Her father was often angry and her mother cut off from him, flirted with other men and eventually left him for one. She planned her departure tidily for her daughter ‘s last term at school, following ten years of Alice knowing this and dreading the day.

A psychologist once told me that she can spot on an adult’s face the last frozen gesture of the child. Sometimes it’s fear she said, more often dashed hope. She used to wonder what it was that had actually happened to take the child out of paradise. No prizes for guessing this with Alice.

She does not attribute the tears to her parents but to her partner who has now moved out. He is a seeker; last time I surveyed he was off to the Far East to find himself. Where had he been mislaid? Now he thinks they « should not be together for a while. » If we translate that into English it means he does not want to be with her. But he won’t say that; it has to be dressed up in spiritual guff. I am sure he has his own childhood traumas to confront but blokes in kaftans are no different from blokes in suits: as a generality commitment scares the waste products out of them. She is waiting patiently while he solicits divine inspiration and her heart is breaking. I don’t know whether it’s solitude, other women or simply his holy books he is tormenting her with.

Nonetheless since the last survey she has become stronger and more prosperous and more articulate but still she has about her this air of the damaged child. The house is giving me clues. A SouthWesterly position threatens Mummy stuff. I look on my luo pan for the Hexagram for this configuration.

Every possible orientation of a house relates to the changing line of a Hexagram from the Book of Changes. This one is Number 18 with the 2nd line changing. Hexagram 18 is gu, that is Poison. The Chinese think in terms of process. Midday, the hour of the Horse, is not at 12 but from eleven to one. So gu probably means, I explain, not that she is entering a period of upset but that she is being offered the opportunity to emerge from one. The image is of scorpions placed in a vessel and left to fight it out. The Zhou diviners of the 2nd Millennium BC considered the last scorpion standing to be especially magical: no RSPCA in those days of course.

Gu is generally considered to refer to someone encountering deep emotional issues. The text attached to the changing line of the Hexagram* is:

“The business of the mother’s, poisoned. Unable to make a divination.“

One interpretation is that the problem is her Mother’s behaviour. Broadly I suspect, Alice would do anything rather than gallivant like her mother. She remembers so well her father’s pain. She lived it. Sometimes a child can’t tell where she ends and the parent begins.

The changing line turns the Hexagram to Number 57 sun, which I take to amount to advice to be very thorough in dealing with her upset.

* Wu Jing Nuan edition ISBN 0-9673272-0-2

Walking around the house I find it impossible to obtain consistent measurements. The magnetic needle on my compass is looping the loop. The house appears to have at least two major flaws which make interior decor very low priority:

“There is serious magnetic interference. This is generally caused either by electricity or underground water.”

“Oh dear.”

“And it sits in what is called a Parent String pattern.”

“Is that bad?”

“No actually.”

The Parent String is rather a good configuration as long as the house is regularly shaped. The porch at the rear however has bent it out of shape; it sticks out making the outline irregular. We do some work to restore the outline. But this is a virtual cure which may last three months. The porch actually needs knocking down and it’s not her house.

Alice’s ten-year-old Cyan, hates her partner.

“That’s her business,” she says,

“How long have you been together ?”

“Six years,” she says sheepishly.

“Hrumph.”

We take steps to divert the underground stream that is running under the front of the house. She will need to renew the path with new-moon charged crystals and report back to me as things change. Meanwhile we place moving water very precisely outside in the garden at shen in the South West and a large Buddha opposite in the front garden at yan the Tiger in the North East.

“I am sorry I couldn’t simply adjust your curtains and put in a couple of windchimes but sometimes feng shui isn’t like that. Usually by the way, when major positive change is just round the corner.”

On my way home Lindy calls me. She is inconsolable.

“That guy,” she says,” The Turkish guy. You told me he’d lie to me. How did you know?”

It was the ba zi, your honour.

“The same way I can tell you that you can choose to have the next guy be worth the trouble. There’s a cosmic law: straight after someone who is not quite right comes someone who is. It’s not divine will or a court order. It’s your choice. Honest.”

She rants a while and cries and I remind her that she was fine pre-Turk and she’ll be fine post-Turk.

James Lovelock thinks that temperate islands like ours will be largely unchanged by global warming. We’ll lose some land but it won’t turn to desert as Southern Europe will, he says. Japan, New Zealand and the British Isles may be become very desirable. What we have to do is get ready to adapt. I think he’s probably right. He also suggests that nuclear power is the way forward. Wind power will not provide enough and solar power will not be harnessed in time, while coal and oil just make everything worse. Yup, sticks in my throat too.

I arrive home. It’s Thursday. Tomorrow is the first day of the Reading Festival. We’ve made a deal with Joey, our 14-year old. We won’t let him camp. We’ll take him to the Festival each day. The deal is he sees the bands, we see the car park. In my daughter Jessie’s part of the house – South for showbusiness – three of her four tea-light candles are burning strong as we turn everything off and go to bed.

Richard Ashworth © 2009

Names have been changed to protect..uh…me. My (still) super-duper (still) revamped website is at www.imperialfengshui.info and The Feng Shui Diaries the book is available now from:

Amazon

Waterstones

And of course all good bookshops. Do buy it from a bookshop if you can.

49, Midhurst Road,

Fernhurst, Haslemere,

GU27, 3EN

tel: 01428 658900

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info@imperialfengshui.info

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© Richard Ashworth 2009