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News Flash: Tagliatelli Presents! There is an interview with Richard on Italian tv. As Richard speaks only pidgin-Italian and there were none nearby, it is in English. You can access it via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd-mtnWTwVI
Thanks are due to our friend Naomi Denny for spotting this
First International Congress on Scientific Feng Shui
and Built Environment, Politecnico di Torino, Turin,
September 18th-20th
2008
“The big picture is without form.” Lao Tze.
Luo Pan, Pizza
Flying into
Turin over the Alps must be one of the most
breathtaking aerial approaches on earth: comparable to Hong Kong or Nice. As my plane descended, the
undercarriage felt as if it might scrape the roof of the Superga, the
magnificent Savoy palace that stands like a sentinel above the city which is itself
divided by the winding River Po. This is real feng shui: real mountains, real
wind and real water and Turin is a location that has commanded
the Italian peninsula since at least the 1st millennium BCE.
Sharawadgi is what keynote speaker Derek Walters called it: the mysterious quality that brings
pilgrims to a location – Stonehenge, the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, standing stones lost in the wilds of Armenia – for no quantifiable reason. Astonishingly
generous with his time, this was the second occasion Derek had addressed a
conference apparently simply because I had asked him nicely.
I had a
little trouble with the Turin Airport security X-rays which picked out my
clear quartz wand, along with the trusty moldavite fragment in my jacket
pocket.
“You write
with this?” the baffled security officer asked, brandishing it like a stylus.
“No, I point
it,” I replied and he shrugged and waved me on as only an Italian can.
Whatever it
is, sharawadgi enticed several
hundred to Turin the weekend of the 18th September including some of the most
creative and authoritative thinkers on feng shui in the world. These included
designers, practitioners, writers, healer, enthusiasts and above all
architects, all there to see how their various disciplines might marry to
design a sustainable world for the future.
My
co-organiser, architect Carlo-Amedeo Reyneri
di Lagnasco, and myself had wanted a meeting of the minds, especially
between those of architects who might not be feng shui literate and those who
were. Principal among the literate was feng shui architect Howard Choy who may lead the world in linking these two spheres.
Howard opened proceedings with a deft introduction that placed feng shui and
architecture right away into their appropriate relationship with the tao (or way) This was typically both definitive and clear. The Chinese
character for “think,” he informed us, differs from that for “observe” by the
addition of the ideogram for “heart.” So to think is to observe with heart.
“We don’t
say,” he said, inviting us to both observe and think deeply, “That feng shui is
a science but that we can study it scientifically.”
There
followed a discussion of the traditional tale of Zhuang Tze and the jumping
fish. Zhuang Tze says that since the fish are jumping, he knows they’re happy.
His sidekick says “How can you be sure? You’re not a fish?” Zhuang Tze says “And
you’re not me. So how do you know what I do and do not know?” How did Zhuang
Tze know how the fish felt? You had to be there.
Jill Lander bought me lunch at the Charlotte May Ladies
Club on Hong Kong Island last year and we got talking about
what she might tell a Western audience. She practices feng shui on the Chinese
mainland. That’s remarkable enough to be getting on with, I told her.
Welsh-born, she graciously tolerated an introduction as English and gave an
impressive exposition of the feng shui of Hong Kong, the fragrant
harbour, and the threats and opportunities that may lie in its future. Was
the Lippo Centre doomed from the start? What will be the future of Lantau Island?
Mauro Aresu and Arianna
Mendo next told of their discovery in Sardinia of stone structures holding measurable healing
energies. This exercise in the marriage of architecture, archaeology and feng
shui in practice led to a series of questions in the panel discussion. These
people are worth checking out.
Equally
ground-breaking was Anthony Ashworth’s
absorbing account of his meetings in Namibia with Credo, the mutwa, or holder of the knowledge of the
generations.
Earlier
this year, Anthony had emailed me pointing out that we had among other things,
names and obsessions in common. Spirit, the Tao or whatever had inspired him to
contact me. We discussed the meaning of the name Ashworth. My determinedly grounded father had always told me that
it referred to supervision of the charcoal burning involved in the making of
soaps. A little prosaic. A reading of John Foster Powys and of Robert Graves’ The White Goddess had suggested
otherwise and Anthony had drawn similar conclusions; keepers of the ash groves,
we speculated. There the connection ended until a couple of months later, Carlo
and I were Googling an authority on what geomantic tradition there might be in
sub-Saharan Africa. And there he was. A trip to
Congleton to ask the ever-approachable Dawn
Gibbins on my bended knees if she would pay for his attendance and Bob
(actually my father’s name) was your uncle.
It is usual
at these gatherings to have the ancient Indian tradition of Vastu Shastra
represented and Giulia Bellentani
did this role proud. But Africa was a new departure. Is there an African tradition that corresponds to
feng shui? Looks like it. Stay in touch, Tone.
Set in the Po valley among the foothills of the Alps, themselves studded with the historic
palaces of the Italian kings, the streets of Torino are laid out in a grid much like
Paris or Washington DC. More than once I found time for
the coffee for which Turin is famous; a Turineso can smell roasting coffee at a thousand paces. Out walking
in search of espresso (You ask for latte, they give you milk.) I noticed that some
of the paving is made up of the sort of op-art pretend perspective that the Romans
used to do in mosaic. Made me clutch the pillars for support frankly. Don’t
look down. Conveniently if you look all the way along the long straight avenues
in any direction your eye falls on distant green hills. The prescient Savoys also incidentally, knowing that the
shadow of the Alps made for above-average rainfall,
arranged for cloisters throughout the city centre to shelter the pavements so
that (as long as you don’t cross a road) you can shop all day without getting
wet. If only Sir Christopher Wren had thought along the same lines.
Richard Ashworth informs the audience that via a time warp, they have entered the set of Terry Gilliam's 1984 futuristic masterwork "Brazil".
Picture: Carlo Amedeo Reyneri di Lagnasco
Emma Re of
Sunshine.
On the second
day native Turineso and co-organiser Carlo Amedeo Reyneri di Lagnasco’s
beautifully illustrated presentation argued convincingly for connections
between the power of the Savoy family and the Piemontese landscape.
And Carlo pulled off the coup on the Saturday night, of enticing China’s favourite Italian, Emma Re to perform live her newest hit My name is Bruce Lee, the title song of
the new Lee biopic. Emma,
a sort of Piemontese Celine Dion, had just returned from singing at the Opening Ceremony of
the Beijing Olympics.
Papers
followed from authorities in disciplines as diverse as semiotics, martial arts
and urban planning. The Hollywood-based architect Simona Mainini, who I had invited after seeing her in Singapore last year, quoted Frank Lloyd Wright: “Form follows function,” she told us
and added that “Function follows the energy.” Simona, a long-time student of
Feng Shui Master Larry Sang, served her architectural apprenticeship with Eric
Lloyd Wright, grandson of Frank, whose holistic vision of course predated this
Congress by more than half a century. Simona went on to show how good drafting
and strict adherence to the traditional meanings of flying star patterns could
lead to almost supernatural results. The producers of 300 are among those who can
endorse this.
Tai chi in the tai
chi.
Among other
outstanding presentations were Roberto
Marrocchesi (described by the absent Jon
Sandifer as a true gent, a very
special soul) and his moving account of the use of feng shui in rebuilding
a family’s life after the death of a child, brought tears to my eyes and I
think many others. A sweet sweet man. Francesco
Rossena bullied the audience charmingly into practising tai chi with him.
Another
highlight was my good friend the irrepressible Priscilla Braccesi who spoke with enormous enthusiasm and authority
(without notes) about the feng shui of Milan, past, present and future. She
speaks English whose dreadfulness is only exceeded by own Italian and
afterwards it was nice via the miracle
of headphone-delivered simultaneous translation, to have my first conversation
with her after five years of sign language and pidgin.
The
effervescent Master Jin Peh
explained the differences between the various types of luo pan with such clarity that when Derek Walters showed one on a slide the
next day, whispers could be heard saying “Sam He…no. Zhong He”.
Master Derek, the Godfather
of Feng Shui, gave two talks linked by the title Mirrors of the Heavens and showed why he continues to constitute
the leading edge in the understanding of Chinese Astrology.
Yangtze Boat
Disaster Averted
I first met
Gyda Anders in central China. We were both climbing the same
ersatz monument reconstructed in cheap plaster. It was, as I recall, on the
side of a boating lake. Michael Rapp was
there too. Both were scathing about the quality of materials used in the construction
that was going on all over China. There in Hubei Province, bamboo scaffolding stretched as
far as the eye could see. On the way out, 8 of us shared a 4-seat launch across
the lake. I am grateful not only for my survival but also for the lesson
learned there that served to ensure that I did not take a similar risk on the
Yangtze at Changsha a week or two later. The Yangtze, you may need reminding,
is a very big river and this was dead of night. No learning is ever lost.
Gyda is a
studious German architect who has presented complex papers all over the world.
In Turin she posed questions about the role
of traditional feng shui in modern architecture as did Michael, another studious German architect (is
there another sort?). Michael is from Munich which may explain why there’s always
a little frown behind his eyes and may not. Michael explained movingly how feng
shui had put him back in touch with why he had become an architect in the first
place. To make better environments for people, he said. Somewhere along the way
he had become someone who shoe-horned people into environments that primarily
suited planners, builders and cost-accountants. Now he demonstrated how a small
number of subtle changes could transform workmanlike architecture into homes that
put human wellbeing first and put the frown somewhat into context.
Earth
acupuncturist, healer, Cambridge graduate and eccentric, Richard Creightmore, perhaps the world’s leading authority on
geopathic stress, covered some familiar territory and some new. It was clear
that his priority now is to heal the planet. Richard built his own stone circle
in Ashdown Forest in the 1990’s explaining that the
employment of astronomical and astrological theory had been augmented by some
ideas gleaned from a “chance encounter with a gnome at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury.” Richard’s work is groundbreaking
in that he references both the physical Hartman Grid and the metaphors of the
Chinese ba zhai system. New to me was his incorporation of the ideas of Masaru
Emoto who has shown that water responds distinctively to the emotions expressed
around it.
Finally as
co-organiser I took my reputation in
both hands by making predictions for 2009 based on Four Pillars theory. I was surprised at just how nervous I was. I’m
more of a one-to-one man. Suggesting that 2009 might be a year of drought, provoked
an appropriate combination of respect and bafflement. Then on the Sunday, as
planned, Jon Sandifer failed to turn
up, appearing on a big screen explaining the principles of Nine Star Ki so as
to show why he as a 2 Earth, could
not safely have made a flight to Turin at this time.
A number of
human power stations such as the magnificently stylish Dianella Mancin, without whose tireless networking and fund
raising the Congress would never have seen the light of day as well as Barefoot Flooring magnate Dawn Gibbins and Lillian Too deserve
big thank yous. Hopefully I will see them all before long and repeat my
gratitude outside the hurly burly..
Another day another dollar.
Don't forget:
Interactive ba zi workshop Godalming
Radical Change in a Weekend or Less
October 18th & 19th 2008, Godalming, Surrey:
“Working with Richard has turned my life around”, Theresa, Charity Worker, Luton
“I was dancing on the underground after leaving you”!!! Fabi, businesswoman, London
Details on ba zi page.
This is an interactive transformational weekend employing the magic of the Four Pillars.
Watch this space for "Secrets of the Four Pillars", professional ba zi course starting October 20th.
Richard's Feng Shui HIP (Home Identification Pack or HIP Replacement) can now be found in the Wealth Section of this website...This will allow you to identify an appropriate new home (or give up and ask me: £87.50 for a 1-hour Yes or No when my itinerary permits).
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