As a response to another section of Lippelt’s book, Feng Shui Demystified, here I will comment on the potentially confusing practice of tracking monthly feng shui stars. But first let us define feng shui “stars” and what a monthly cycle is.
The word “stars” refers to an energy field which is created in a structure when it was built (semi-permanent energy) as well as “visiting” energy, such as monthly cycles. As an analogy, someone could live a certain stable climate, but seasonally they are visited by predictable weather patterns, such as places that have predictable monthly cycles like a rainy season or hurricanes.
The energy in your home is not stagnant, or at least it shouldn’t be. Yearly, monthly and even daily changes occur continuously. Some of those cycles are more important than others, especially based on how much time you dwell in any given area. The eight basic directions, dividing up your floor plan, are host to annual energy as well as monthly energy in each direction.
For example, one month a person might have a monthly “star” in their bedroom which implies sickness and that might be a month when the person has low energy or even succumbs to an actual illness. A positive monthly cycle might manifest where a person working in a directional zone of their home or business experiences the benefits of a monthly “visitor” which attracts extra money.
In Lippelt’s book, he shares with the reader various ways in which monthly cycles are tracked, and unfortunately, they all contradict each other. I appreciate, however, that he is exposing the reader to the different practices and points of view. And he had every right to emphasize which system made the most sense to him. This happens in other types of calculations and formulas as well.
One area where he does not compare is the two ways in determining the beginning cycle for each month (or year). Since he compares so many different schools, with this topic I have to assume he doesn’t know there is a controversy. He refers exclusively to the lunar calendar which vacillates from year to year and is different from the solar calendar. It’s the solar calendar that we use in feng shui, but even long-time practitioners don’t always know this. It’s hard for me to even read books which give out the wrong information. But this is also understandable because Feng Shui borrows techniques from two different forms of Chinese astrology. One form is called Zi Wei Dou Shu (uses lunar calendar) and Ba Zi (uses solar calendar). Once we get past that hurdle, the different monthly approaches are even more frustrating.
One school “floats” or ascends the monthly star (coded numerically) in an ascending pattern. This means that if the monthly 4 star is in your bedroom one month, the next month it will be a 5 star, and the month after that a 6 star. Another school teaches that the monthly star descends in each direction from month to month. For example, if your front door has a monthly 9 star in April, then the monthly star will be 8 in May and 7 in June. (This is the system I use and it also correlates with the annual star in a descending pattern as the years roll forward.)
Still another system uses one pattern from the December solstice to the June Solstice and then a reverse pattern from the June solstice back to the December Solstice. This method is really tricky because the solstices are not the exact same day/hour each year. The June solstice is sometimes on June 20, other times on June 21st. This is also done for DAILY stars and being one day off in your calculations means you are wrong every day.
Another odd approach is adhering to a lunar calendar for some calculations and a solar calendar for others. This could be hard to reconcile for both practitioners and clients when it comes to trusting the accuracy of monthly or even daily cycles.
In my own Feng Shui practice, if I average 400 annual update clients in a year, only about 4-8 might want feng shui monthly advice as well. So, we’re talking 1-2%. I accommodate these folks, but they know that I am hardly ever going to make a feng shui recommendation which contradicts the permanent or annual stars, just for the sake of a 30 day cycle. Sometimes it is important, sometimes not. If you are trying to get pregnant, sell a house, sign a contract or accomplish something that can happen in a monthly cycle or a certain day, then these smaller cycles are relevant. Otherwise, balancing the permanent and yearly stars should be sufficient. I liken this to a person who has a strong immune system. If the overall feng shui of the house is good and annual stars are in check, then a monthly or daily star may have little impact.
Of course, when something major happens in the News, I might refer to the very important yearly/monthly tracking in a separate system called Nine Star Ki, to make corroborations in that system, which is a completely separate predictive art. But for the feng shui monthly and daily stars, they are not even interpreted the same way.
The final big surprise is that Lippelt is in the minority when it comes to how we relate to the monthly star when it joins the mix of “mountain dragon,” “water dragon,” and “Period star.” If we also throw the annual star in the mix, we are juggling the inter-relationship between FIVE different stars. He notes that there is a tradition of pairing the Period star with the monthly star. From my perspective, if you actually know what the Period star is (based on when the house was built), then there is no excuse to not do a full flying star chart, emphasizing the mountain dragon and the water dragon (which he refers to as the “facing star.”)
That being said, there are all kinds of justifications for emphasizing different stars. In fact, one of the first calculations I learned was the pairing of the Period star with the annual star. There seems to be a time and place (all puns intended) to pair an annual or monthly star with either the mountain dragon or water dragon. This cryptic language refers to stars which individually control either our health and relationships or our finances and the events we attract to ourselves.
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Feng Shui Theory Blog Series
