I’ve had this discussion with a client who is a long-time astrologer, a friend who is an astrologer and with a couple of my students: the idea that Feng Shui timing cycles could be OFF. It is something that hardly anyone in the Feng Shui field even knows about. With current times so different from the distant past, it was much more common for a Feng Shui master to be an astrologer and/or an astronomer as well, but nowadays not so much. The question about the exactness of the nine Periods hardly ever comes up and most practitioners just accept the conventional start dates, without questioning.

What are these Nine Periods?  Well, not all Feng Shui traditions rely on the nine Periods, but it is the heart and soul of Xuan Kong Fei Xing, the Flying Star School.  Unseen energy charts interpret the captured magnetic field inside a building or house at the time it was built. These charts are based on the compass orientation of a structure, in combination with the year it was built.  And every year is part of a larger Construction Period.  In the Flying Star School, each Period lasts for 20 years and there are nine Periods.  This means that a larger cycle of 180 years will repeat perpetually.

The start date of these Periods is understood to begin on February 3rd, 4th, or 5th and those several days do not vacillate beyond that. This early February date in this Solar calendar measures the mid-way point each year between the December Solstice and the March equinox, no matter what hemisphere you are in.

But what about the 9 Periods? Have they neatly begun each 20 years without variation?

In the more recent past:

  • the last Period 1 began in 1864,
  • the last Period 2 began in 1884,
  • the last Period 3 began in 1904,
  • the last Period 4 began in 1924,
  • the last Period 5 began in 1944,
  • that last Period 6 began in 1964,
  • the last Period 7 began in 1984,
  • the last Period 8 began in 2004
  • and the next Period 9 is to begin in 2024.  Who questions this?

There are a few Feng Shui experts who have questioned the exactness of these 20 year Periods, precisely because they have assumed that the 20 year Period is in sync with the recurring Saturn/Jupiter conjunction, which occurs every 19-20 years. Over long periods of time, Chinese historians, astronomers, and feng shui specialists have tried to pin-point when these astronomical cycles were discovered, going back as far or further than a couple thousand years, B.C.  Some were looking for a precise time when all known planets aligned.

The idea that we need to factor in the precise movement of the planets made sense to me, as I had nearly thirty years ago my first encounter with a Vedic astrologer.  In the Vedic astrology system (Sidereal) I am a Pisces, compared to Western Astrology (Tropical system) where I’m an Aries.  The three-week difference in cut-off points is based on acknowledging the discrepancies between these two systems over long periods of time.  Do we need to be that precise?  To launch a rocket, NASA certainly needs to be precise, so why should we expect less from our metaphysical calculations since they also look to the cosmos for accurate comparisons?

Reading the archived posts by a few respectable and earnest dissenters really intrigued me and I try to keep my mind receptive to new information. Another Chinese meta-physician has correlated other larger overlapping time frames, such as with the 12-Year Chinese zodiac signs. You can multiply 12 signs 30 times to get 360 years, which would also hold two complete cycles of the 9 Periods, (not to mention match up with the 360 degrees on a compass).  Five cycles of the Chinese zodiac (totaling 60 years) also fits neatly into the Feng Shui Yun cycles, of which there are three, each lasting 60 years. Taken further, we have cycles that repeat every 3600 years, and so on.

According to Vedic astrologer Paul Sulzman, neither the Neptune/Uranus conjunction, nor the Saturn/Jupiter conjunction are aligned perfectly with the 20 year Periods or longer Epochs over the last few millennium.

Could we be assuming, incorrectly, which planets or constellations are directly influencing these 20 year Time Cycles?  This is the argument put forth by those practitioners who have documented for decades the reliable interpretations and results, when adhering to the conventional 20 Year Period start dates as we know them.  But imagine the stress for a Feng Shui practitioner to be told emphatically by a peer that we actually started Period 9 in 2020, and where they conveniently attribute the global COVID disaster as proof that the world shifted in a fundamental way that year?

What about another practitioner who believes that the cycles are WAY off and that we’ve again reached Period 1 already? To counter that, I have spoken to one world-renown Feng Shui authority who cryptically implied that our nine 20-Year-Periods are monitored by the deities who run the 7 stars (and two assistant stars) of the Big Dipper, each taking turns and claiming a Period of their own to reign over. Is our world possibly a cosmic Realty Show that is controlled by inter-dimensional beings we know nothing about?

Based on other strange phenomenon related to Feng Shui, interactions with alien beings may not be that far-fetched. What is likely; however, is that there is more for us to discover and uncover. The ancients wrote in code and purposefully did not spell it out for future generations. Since Feng Shui is so much a relationship between the Earth and the Sun, perhaps the answer to the Period question is revealed in the Earth-Sun relationship exclusively.

As some of you know, I created a special Case Study on Period 9, for the benefit of fellow practitioners and Flying Star enthusiasts who want to know more about this upcoming Period, especially since none of us were around for the last Period 9. I’ve also advised plenty of clients in 2023 about what houses to build or not build in this cusp year unless we know for sure whether or not the structure will be completed by February 2024.

I do stand by my training and experience thus far. I get a pretty high percentage of feedback that the conventional start dates for the Periods has been accurate.  That said, any practitioner who has been consulting for a while knows that there are numerous variables to sift through and one could achieve a “false positive,” based on other influences when the whole Feng Shui environment is factored in, including areas that have nothing to do with timing or even direction. Stay tuned!

Author: Kartar Diamond

Company: Feng Shui Solutions ©

From the Feng Shui Theory Blog Series