Q & A – The Devil in the Glass
Q. I have this client who collects things made of glass. She has a collection of what are sort of wine glasses with sculptures for stems. Two of the glass stem sculptures are of the devil, and one of them has the devil spearing a couple of people and there are little white glass dead bodies scattered around the base of the glass footing. She loves this! She had it in her fame area, and I’ve removed it to a holding area which is in knowledge. She wants to know if she can put these somewhere. I usually find knowledge (she is learning how to make glass things, these sculptures inform her…) to be the best place for questionable things. But I don’t have any sense of comfort about these things remaining. Perhaps these two things are all I can say. What would you say?
love, T.
Q & A – Hallway Bagua
Q. If you do it over the entire house and a room (like a hallway or a bedroom) is split down the center between the Health and Family area and the Wealth and Prosperity area, should you do one half of the hallway as H&F and the other half as W&P?
A. When 2 sections of the Bagua meet in the middle of a hallway, you can choose to enhance one or both sections there. The Bagua map provides us with a way to relate to Ch’i flow, which is fluid rather than rigid. So ask yourself which feels better and then enhance the space accordingly. Love, Terah
Read MoreQ & A – Bedroom in Health Area
Q. Our master bedroom resides in the Health and Family area. How can I set it up so that it’s warm and sensual for my wife and I, and still bring out the H&F part of it?
A. You’ll find lots of suggestions for enhancing the Health & Family area that’s in your master bedroom on page 40 and 185 in the Western Guide to Feng Shui, Room by Room book. Just keep your enhancements soft and romantic so that they harmonize with a restful bedroom atmosphere. Love, Terah
Read MoreQ & A – Bagua Room vs. Structure
Q. Are you suppose to use the bagua map over the entire house as well as in each individual room, or choose one or the other? If you choose one over the other, which is better to do: over the entire house, or room by room?
A. It can be very revealing to map both the entire house as well as each room. Because a house is bigger than a room, I like to concentrate on enhancing the house first, which inevitably takes me into various rooms! If your home is not a square or rectangle, it’s important to balance the shape, as described on page 29 in the Western Guide to Feng Shui, Room by Room. Then continue your enhancement work, room by room, until the whole house has had the pleasure of your Feng Shui touch. Remember, every square inch counts! Love, Terah
Read MoreQ & A – Bathroom in the Center
Q. Our bathrooms are located in the center of the house, do you have any recommendations for us on fixing that up? Thanks for any help you can give and thanks for your Room by Room book, I enjoyed it so much. —Lee S.
Read MoreQ & A – Feng Shui and Guns
Q. Where is the best place to store guns? I had them in the closet in family and we have explosive arguments. I can do almost anywhere in the basement except skill and knowledge. Please help, I am reading books and my consultant said to email you.
A. There is a difference between antique gun collections and guns of current vintage and use. The antiques have a strong historical, even valuable, artifact energy. As such, they can sometimes be successfully housed within the home’s Bagua when displayed in a nice glassed, even locked, case, within a large enough space, so as not to dominate the "conversation" in the room. This strategy applies to other antique weapons, as well as any other historical items that might be "scary",
such as old medical instruments, tools, pieces of machinery, etc. Though "of the ancestors", I wouldn’t place them in any large quantity in the Health and Family gua, as they would bring too much of that old, decaying, unused energy into a gua we like to see enhanced with fresher Ch’i.
If the items have a difficult story to tell (massacres, etc.) I would be more cautious with them, and would probably suggest donating them to a museum, where their story can be more appropriately housed and shared with a larger community of interest.
Guns, and other weapons, of current use are a different story. They carry more of a "danger–you are unsafe here" message. Hunting guns can be safely stored in an outbuilding or detached garage, which takes them out of the home’s primary Bagua energy entirely. Even placement in an attached garage can be better than placement within the main family living areas. "Out of sight, out of mind" allows more positive thought to prevail inside the home, and the impact of the gun energy is lessened.
Smaller guns intended for use in case of intruders are problematic for a variety of reasons, but each family will have their own personal decisions to make about how to keep themselves feeling safe both from intruders AND from the gun(s) itself. Obviously, to be of use in an emergency, any weapon needs to be kept handy, but still out of sight, and certainly out of reach of children.
I have done FS for clients with "current use" gun collections stored in a large gun "safe", which is locked and made to look like a piece of decorative furniture. This armoire-shaped safe is then put into a side room or guest room, or den and is fairly innocent of negative energetics. The only negative energy forthcoming was that of any household members who were in disagreement over the keeping of guns on the premises in the first place. This disagreement definitely had to be worked out within the family before the gun safe felt friendly to all. In one instance, I recommended that the safe be put out into the garage because its presence was being felt far too strongly by the wife, who had fears about children’s safety with guns on the premises.
We can do a lot with basic Form School Feng Shui remedies to assist clients in feeling more safe in their homes. Sharp corners, breakable items, exposed knives, too many uncurtained windows, and a lack of a protective embrace around the home, to list just a few, can all contribute to a client’s anxiety and feelings of vulnerability. As you can see, the "correct" placement of weapons in the home requires the answering of deeper questions before a good solution is found.
Karen Carrasco, WSFS Teacher
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