Feng without Shui: My Diary for the Month of the Earth Sheep 2017

Poundbury: feng without shui.
My diary for the month of the Fire Sheep
(06:21 7^th July 2017 to 15:27 7^th August inclusive)
in the Year of the Fire Rooster.

 Dun

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Coming to Meet
Hexagram 33

The Sheep Month
Animal by Animal
During this Fire Sheep Month,
The Rat is on the retreat,
The Ox is sticking,
The wise Tiger finds opening,
The Rabbit blooms,
The Dragon mediates,
The Snake at last seeks counsel,
The Horse doesn’t,
The Sheep is on the periphery,
Wise Monkeys wait their turn,
The Rooster counts the gain,
The Dog may be especially restless,
and
The Pig comes home.

A 3 month; about aspiration and persistence.
Most helpful locations: North, East, North-East.
Least helpful: West.
Favoured Animals: Sheep, Horse, Pig, Rabbit.
Especially challenged one way or another: (still) Rat and Ox.

Animal Fortunes for the Rooster year remain on the website all year:
2017: Year of the Turkey. Now may be the time.

Where to do what, when and why

Summary: Here’s where wealth and success are hiding this month.
North East, Wealth Star: Year Star: 4 gip sat, Month Star: 6
This month could bring windfalls or the arrival of substantial delayed payments. Be here to receive them; this is the correct place and orientation for the leader and entrepreneur at this point. And again this applies especially to West Group kua (8,6,7,2) as well as many Rats and Pigs. Financial creativity is happening here, artistic not so much.
Monthly Enhancement: A bowl of fresh Water changed daily.
Annual Solution: Fire, (eg bright light). 4 Plants (eg 4 bamboos in Water).

One to avoid; where not to be this month

Summary: Here’s how not to suffer a plague of frogs this summer.
South, Bright Future: Year Star: 5 wu huang, Month Star: 7
7 with 5 is a money loss combination, the South is about visibility and the 7 represents interference. So loss of face too, public interference, public loss especially for Rats & Oxen and West Group kuas (2 6 7 8); this is not the place to talk indiscriminately. It could be a costly place to be this month if you dig or drill as well as a sickly one. Best for: female East Group kuas (1, 3, 4 or 9) Tigers, Dogs or Sheep. Risky, so stay clear if possible. Don’t over-illuminate. These comments apply to users of South-facing doors, South-oriented desks and beds and the Southern sector of the house measured from its centre or tai chi; poor all year of course, it’s a little better next month
Month Enhancement:  t’ang lung plus reduced light.
Play it safe: wu lou.
Annual Solution: t’ang lung.

Know your inner beast. How Sheep are you?

Birth in the Sheep Hour (1-3pm)~: clubbable children.
Birth on the Sheep Day#: idealist, hippy values.
Birth during the Sheep Month (July)*: don’t work alone.
Birth in the Sheep Year: bohemian heritage.
~ GMT. # You’ll need a Chinese calendar for this. * Caution: Chinese months start later

Poundbury: feng without shui.

“If one knows how to empty and open the mind, one can fill the belly. Once one has filled the belly, fortune and misfortune are in the palm of the hand.”
Liu I-Ming.

There are reckoned to be more Roman remains under Dorchester in Dorset than any other conurbation in Europe. The Romans obviously liked broad hills and sea-views and obviously they built villas where the land was fertile. The villas were set up much lower down of course on what is termed the “military ridge” where they could see and not be seen and were protected from the constant British winds. To the South of Dorchester lies Maiden Castle, an iron age hillfort probably last occupied when the Romans invaded. From its summit you can see agricultural land laid out in Saxon hide-measures in every direction, some of it arable, some of it given over to sheep, some to cattle, all as green as laurel at this time of year.

Maiden doesn’t look much like a castle; more like a cattle-enclosure a dozen football pitches wide. There are ramparts but they are of earth not stone and after all this time they seem more like natural hillocks and mounds than defences. Like most castles Maiden was a place of retreat in times of invasion. There is natural Water here and archaeologists have found plenty of evidence of episodic habitation; the local Celtic tribe, the Durotriges (hence Dorset) clearly had their differences with the Dumnoni (hence Devon) to the West and with the Atrebates of Hampshire and Sussex to the East. And finally in 43 AD they holed up here for a final showdown with the invading Romans. And – spoiler alert – this time they lost. The wind may swirl around but the enclosure itself is quite protected. Nonetheless it was not enough to withstand Roman discipline and superior technology.

Feng shui of course means Wind Water and this name incorporates its central principles: as the Book of Odes states it – “The qi (that is energy, power, life) comes down from the Mountain on the Wind and is held at the Water.” Until the Wind is under control, no enclosure be it house, office or new-age model community supports life. I have known businesses that could not get started, set on windy promontories and indeed premature death from the restless Wind ailments such Parkinson’s Disease, motor neurones and epilepsy. Natural Water holds the qi and of course so does Wood, that is to say the trees that are naturally found bordering Water.

Between Maiden and the next hill along, there used to be an avenue of mature ash trees lining the old A35. Last week I took that route up to the Duchess of Cornwall – which is not only the title of the Prince of Wales’ fragrant consort but also a hotel atop Poundbury, deep in the Prince’s experimental community. I was driven there by my client about whom I’m allowed to tell you no more than that she is a talented herbalist whose ointment is the only thing that has ever relieved the pain of my arthritic left thumb. Yes; some people have high status serious arthritis, I’ve just got the one annoying digit to which no amount of glucosamine sulphate, green-lipped mussel or dulcamara 6 has  made the slightest difference. But that ointment is miraculous. Thankyou E.

The Duchess – the hostelry not the Queen-in-waiting – is magnificent like all the buildings in Poundbury. Everything, social housing, shops, halls, are magnificent, the mean height appearing to be five storeys plus. It’s something like the Valley of the Kings or possibly even Auschwitz, a queasy hybrid of mausoleum and theme park. But a theme park lacking a theme – unless the theme is indicated by the 2-to-1 scale statue of the Queen Mother that studs the hotel courtyard. The plan I’m told, was to serve the human being not the car but – dur – there’s no railway station and although Waitrose (of course) is reached by raised pavement and portico, the roads are too narrow for the buildings. It’s as if every one of them thinks it’s the Albert Hall. And carbon-neutral or no, there are a lot of cars here.

It’s easy of course to shy at the heir apparent’s grandiosity – good-hearted and remote old article as he clearly is – but I’m a feng shui man and here’s what I know: communities grow up around natural Water and where roads meet and I think there’s none of the first here and the A35 roundabout dividing the roads to Yeovil and Sidling doesn’t amount to a crossroads.

And it’s easy also to pick holes in a hotel. But…..the room I’m in is tiny and the bed isn’t; there’s plenty space for Shrek plus Cameron Diaz and Donkey. It’s some task to walk around it. The picture window over the courtyard offers blackout curtains or nothing. So I’m presented with a choice of artificial light or potential arrest as an exhibitionist. There are lamps and bulbs everywhere, I turn off fully six before I can settle and one socket continues to glow. There’s another in the ceiling to reassure me I guess, that the sprinkler is operational – good to know so soon after Grenfell Tower but who can sleep easily with a beacon winking over their head?

It’s graceless to say but such grandeur could so easily have been made welcoming if someone had actually tried out the room; a Secret Sleeper if you will. The bathroom basin doesn’t drain which makes for a ring of toothpaste scum and the bath – I like a bath when I’ve been following a fit young herbalist around the Dorset countryside for much of the day, it’s a very hilly county, you know. The bath has a clever non-removable plug which is displaced as soon as you turn on the tap. Exhausted I skip the evening round of this challenge but 4am finds me leaning over the rim and holding the plug down until the water is at a level sufficient to resist the power of the flow.

And so on. Which is not my point. What is my point is that if you asked me for one essential – “What do I look out for when choosing a home?” – it would be: never try to live where the land is windswept. And Poundbury is despite the egregious architecture, racked by wind. At night wind is the soundtrack. And what would protect against it? Why, mature trees. And those ashes went the way of all bark in 2004.

I’ve known homes on similar ridges where it’s been impossible to settle, fatalities as I said, too. The wind whether on the Cheshire heights or the Cornish coast just doesn’t give up. You’d never find a Roman villa exposed like that. Only castles and cathedrals are deliberately placed on high.

And Maiden Castle as I also said, was a gathering place in times of invasion. In point of fact iron age hillforts are exactly what gave rise to the motte and bailey design of Norman castles; elevated battlements for defence, open space for the defended. And Poundbury is more like Maiden than anything else; in its grandiosity, in its impenetrability and above all in its anachronism. This is not its time. Like Maiden, it was only under great pressure that it was ever going to be a community. And yet….

Unlike much of its produce and menus, Poundbury is not organic. It’s not a natural meeting of the ways. It’s feng without shui if you like. The Wind will always prevail.
Richard Ashworth © 2017