Elixir's
Seventh Feng Shui Window
11/07/09 (21/09/4707)
Ji/Yin Earth
Cho/Yin Earth (Ox) Year
Jia/Yang Wood
Xu/Yang Earth (Dog) Month
Bing/Yang FireChen/Yang Earth (Dragon) Day
This is the beginning of the Tenth Chinese Solar Month of Li Dong , Winter Standing.br>
This month's basic feng shui framework
Yi /Celestial Yin Wood
which is gentle breezes and the migration of life.
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and
Hai / Terrestrial Yang Water,which is the ocean.
Secondarily, Hai converts to Ren/Celestial Yang Water, which is the expansiveness of space and Jia/Celestial Yang Wood, which is Thunder, Lightning, the birth of stars and the expansion of the universe.
Discussion about this month's window
November 7th was a Fire Dragon day, so this month's window has a special resonance with Elixir's opening and the essence of Belvedere-Tiburon's feng shui.
In the East, we placed a clump of Feather Reed Grass in a reed basket. The Place of Reeds is an ancient land that numerous cultures describe as their origin. Cultural migrations began from the Place of Reeds. So this aspect of the display emphasizes both origin and migration. Grasses, reeds, wind and the migration of life all come from Celestial Yin Wood.
In the West, we find 49 Pheasant feathers placed in a rope basket. This expresses the length and continuity of our journey.
In the South, we have a shell, coral and feather display placed in a 19th Century Japanese Imari porcelain bowl. On the outside of the bowl itself is a dynamic bat motif. The bat is symbolic of joy in the Taoist culture. The lid of this bowl features three tortoises converging around a central axis, with three pairs of Red-Crested Cranes radiating around the periphery.
The tortoises are symbolic of the energy of the North. The pairs of Red-Crested Cranes embody the essence of sacred relationship, a shared path of friendship that leads to immortality. The threes in both the tortoises and the cranes reflect the three aspects of time: beginning, middle and end, youth, adulthood and dotage.
The shells bring the energy of the ocean, here combined with firey robin feathers in the South to create a spot of Yin in the Yang and vice versa.
The final expression of Celestial Yang Water came through Elixir's front door in the form of this lovely rainfall. This part of our display happened courtesy of our artist-in-residence Heather Martin. The rainfall came as a shift in her Labyrinths of Time installation. This occurred when space in the gallery crunched under the load of her expanding show over time.
Transformation is born from pressure.
Take home lesson
Simplicity and synergy are the name of the game when we're doing this kind of work. It's worth the effort to find a single piece that embodies the essence of the relationships at play. This is so much better than finding a hundred meaningless or semi-meaningful pieces and trying to somehow cobble them all together.
Find what works best, and do no more.
John Mini, M.S.C.M./ L.Ac.
