Dear Lillian,
I RECENTLY bought your book Fortune 2009 for Dragons. In your book you mentioned that dragons born in the year 1964 will be doing fine, while houses facing north will be facing a lot of obstacles. I am a married female Dragon born in 1964. I stay in a North-facing house. Please advise on what remedies I should take next year.

Stressful Lady

Dear Stressful Lady,
YOU must never get stressed out by astrological warnings or guidelines as they are meant to help you get through the year safe and better off than if you did nothing. In fact, being a 1964 Dragon, you will find that many things will go your way next year. Your energy spirits will be buoyant and your attitudes will propel you along despite the doom and gloom pervading the energies of the world right now. However, the north direction is afflicted next year with the five yellow so what you need is the five-element pagoda. Get a big one and fill it with earth, then place it in the North location (ie. near the front door). This alone can successfully suppress the five-yellow. This is a vital cure which everyone must place in their North corners for next year. It helps you steady your finances and ensure survival in what are difficult economic times.

Dear Lillian
I TRIED to study my Personal 8 characters and 10 luck pillars. I am born on Aug 31, 1969 at 7.l5pm. My self-element is yang Earth but weak. My wealth element is Water and this element is twice present in my 8 pillars chart and in my 10 luck pillars now, rat’s year people have Earth and Water Element - is this auspicious for me? Which year could be auspicious for me? How could I energize this wealth luck? This year’s Fire element feels it’s not good for my self-element (weak Earth). I live in a NW3 facing house. Where must I energize? This year is a stressful year for me with a lot of problems. Fortunately, since July my life has become better.

Best regards,
Marie

My dear Marie,
THANK you for your letter but, oh dear, it seems to me you MUST read my book on EIGHT CHARACTERS again, as you appear to have got things a little wrong. See, if you are weak earth, then Fire is required for you to even smell the money luck indicated in your chart. If you live in a NW3 facing house it means that your house is a SE sitting house and that makes it a Wood house. Note that wood destroys earth and since you are a weak earth person the house will be depleting your energy.

What you need is plenty of fire energy, so turn on the lights and in your earth corners, SW and NE, you should install some bright lights. Wearing red is sure to help you a great deal.

Please remember that when the self-element is weak it is vital to strengthen it otherwise no matter what good luck is indicated in your luck pillars, it will not and cannot materialise.

Dear Lillian
I AM very confused. Which is more important - feng shui in general, personal feng shui or flying stars? You see, my brother’s kua number is 5 - he is a realtor. His house faces West. In the SW, he has his office which is above the garage. This is one of his lucky directions but this year the SW has bad stars. The South of his house is where the washroom and storage room is.

Since South is his unlucky direction, is this good news or not? How can he tap up his fame direction? Actually, how can anyone tap up his fame direction since the bad stars are in South this year? His success direction is the NE where he has a washroom (top floor) and a kitchen and patio (ground floor).

How can he tap up the fortunes of the NE? The SE, which is his wealth direction in general, is one of his unlucky directions. Should he tap it up or not?

My question is should we tap up our lucky directions even when there are bad stars in those directions?

Thank you,
Manpreet

Dear Manpreet,
IT IS easy to get confused with the many different schools and practices of feng shui that have now come to light - but if you understand the basic fundamentals of this living skill, you will begin to get greater clarity.

Generally, environmental feng shui is widely acknowledged as exerting the greatest influence although the time changes of energy are always taken note of.

This means that feng shui astrology (feng shui that is related to the passage of lime, the twelve animal signs and the annual and monthly Lo Shu charts) are considered as exerting very large and dominant influences on your feng shui. Thus, the effect of natural landforms and rivers exert greater influence on our lives than say, man-made buildings whose life energy is a mere few years compared to the thousands of years which lie behind the formation of landforms.

As for the formulas of feng shui which you refer to (ie. the 8 aspirations pa kua method, flying stars and eight mansions) these are considered to be the easiest Feng Shui to practice and when used in conjunction with symbolic enhancers and cures can also be very powerful.

Just take note of these few guidelines and you will be able to work out solutions to your predicaments;

1. When your auspicious direction(s) are afflicted by the annual stars such as the South (in 2008, the South is afflicted), it is best NOT to face the South or activate the South as this does little good and could cause harm.

2. For the same reason, you can skip activating the South for fame and recognition this year. This is because the negative afflictions of the South direction are strong and activating the South with fire energy will only strengthen the afflictions (mainly the five yellow).

3. However the South is the direction of the Horse and because the energy of the Horse is weakened, adding more horses to the South is not necessarily a bad thing.

4. About the NE direction, since it is occupied by the washroom and the kitchen you definitely cannot activate it! Find the NE of your bedroom or living room instead and activate the small tai chi.

5. About the SE and the wealth direction according to the 8 aspirations pa kua formula, you can definitely activate this even though it is one of your unlucky directions. When the SE is properly activated with say, a water feature everyone living in the house benefits but you should not stay in the SE!!

I hope that this clarifies things for you!