Before I begin, I’m going to hereby declare that no other practitioner has stood out to discuss this issue. Not in Singapore and nowhere else in the world. At least not to my knowledge. May I say it’s also funny because some practitioners who have blogs of their own had manipulated the publishing date of their posts to date before mine was first published to create an illusion that this is their research? (Yes, publishing dates on websites can be manipulated.)
Anyway, the epiphany that led to this blog post was the result of the pandemic, which you will understand why as you read this post.
Whatever I’m going to say here probably goes against every single practitioner out there, and I’m probably the only one (so far) who has come out to say that everything we think we know is wrong publicly.
Let’s begin.
Feng Shui Period 9 is a term you’ll hear getting thrown around a lot because 2024 is around the corner, but I’ve recently made a discovery that will change not only how people look at feng shui but also the industry and this field as a whole.
The main argument, perhaps I should even use the word “axiom”, is that Feng Shui Period 9 does not start in 2024. Feng Shui Period 9 started in 2020 when Jupiter and Saturn formed a great conjunction.
I don’t think anybody will argue against the fact that Covid-19 changed the world forever and we felt its full impact in 2020, and ‘practitioners’ and ‘masters’ are still claiming that Feng Shui Period 9 started in 2024, which I feel is preposterous.
The Importance Of Going Into The Theory Behind Chinese Metaphysics
Bear in mind this is not a critique of other feng shui masters per se, but it’s a more systemic issue in the Chinese metaphysics field that is not being addressed.
Most of my readers and clients would know by now that I always say that if one wants to be a practitioner or an expert in any other field, one cannot just focus on the application – you must know the underlying theories and building blocks of that application. It’s normal to assume that someone who bothers to go deep into the subject will be the true expert, and it is not unreasonable to expect anyone in any industry to approach their craft in this manner.
This is precisely the problem in the Chinese metaphysics field because many newcomers are satisfied just knowing the application and are eager to turn this into a career. They read up a bit on feng shui application, and suddenly they are a “feng shui master” without knowing a single thing about astronomy and not even the astronomical names of the stars we use in Chinese metaphysics.
For example, one very common mistake is that many practitioners do not adjust for solar time for BaZi readings because they don’t even know what solar time is or do not appreciate how BaZi was developed in the past. As a result, many people’s charts are plotted wrongly. I’ll leave this for another post.
One of the biggest issues in the Chinese metaphysics and feng shui industry is that people are more into developing unfounded, convoluted theories rather than preserving what was passed down. The Golden Age of Chinese metaphysics and Chinese industry ended with the Song (宋) dynasty, which saw a revival in the Qing (清) and Ming (明) dynasties, and we have now fallen into the Dark Ages of Chinese metaphysics.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, it’s not difficult to appreciate why I said the feng shui industry is in the Dark Ages. I won’t bore everyone again with the same things I’ve been saying my entire career.
What Is A Feng Shui Period?
A feng shui period is not something that most laymen interested in feng shui will know.
You’ll often hear me mention this a lot: Chinese metaphysics would not be possible if you could not measure time. The 10 Heavenly Stems, 12 Earthly Branches and the 9 Stars you always hear in feng shui are all used to measure time. This, back in the old days, is regarded as common sense because people lived in an era without clocks and time was measured by looking at the celestial clock in the sky made up of the stars and planets.
Imagine a time when clocks were not invented yet – how would you know how long a year is? Or a month, week or day? You look to the sun, the planets and the stars. An easy example: The 9 Stars are the Big Dipper, and depending on where the Big Dipper is pointing, we’ll know what time of the year and the season it is.
The Feng Shui Period is a 20-year cycle, but this 20-year cycle is just one part of an even bigger cycle. You can consider one “Period” as one minor cycle.
You’ll hear the term sān yuán jiǔ yùn (三元九运) often in feng shui, which refers to the three major cycles (yuán 元) and 9-minor cycles (yùn 运).
One major cycle, yuan (元), comprises three minor cycles. One major cycle is 60 years. One minor cycle, yùn (运), is 20 years. One full cycle is 180 years. Let’s break down the numbers and understand why each cycle was allocated a particular duration:
- 20-Year Minor Cycle (运): This is simply due to the Grand Conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, which, just FYI, have always been part of Chinese astrology.
- 60-Year Major Cycle (元): The 60-year major cycle represents the sexagenary cycle we use in Chinese timekeeping, which is your 六十甲子 system. These were nominal markers in the cosmos. They also tracked Earth’s relative position between the Sun and Jupiter because Jupiter gives rise to the 12 Zodiacs, as it takes 12 years to revolve around Earth.
- 180-Year Super Cycle (三元九运): The reason why a super/full cycle is 180 years is just an extrapolation of the 20-year minor cycle and the 9 Trigrams we use in Chinese metaphysics (9 x 20 = 180).
How the 9 Trigrams are applied in feng shui can be is another complex altogether which will require a separate blog post, so I won’t go into that for now. Everyone should know how important the 9 Trigrams are in feng shui application because it’s literally in every feng shui technique, but what people fail to understand is why and how it’s applied because it’s not as simple as superimposing a 9-grid square on every thing you wish to analyze. There is a lot more to it and it can only be explained via the astronomy of feng shui. Perhaps to give everyone a peek into my mind: The 9 Trigrams basically helps us perceive astronomy better and more accurately.
Whether or not we are talking about the 20, 60, or 180 cycles, all that the Chinese sages and astrologers of the past were trying to do is to track and reckon time because as I’ve said before, if we cannot reckon time, we cannot observe patterns and cycles. If we cannot observe patterns and cycles, we cannot study what the laws governing our world are.
Whenever you see a number in Chinese metaphysics, there is always a reason, which always falls back down to measuring time.
What All Feng Shui Masters Got Wrong – Myself Included
The industry-held belief is that feng shui Period 9 starts in 2024. The current mega-cycle started in 1864, and we would be in Period 9 by the time 2024 is here, with each passing 20-year major cycle. Period 9 starting in 2024 is the textbook answer to the question of “When does Feng Shui Period 9 start?”.
There is a reason why our ancestors put 1864 as the start of Period 1. It is not some random, arbitrary point in time they decided to pick.
I went into my feng shui practice assuming that the system our ancestors came up with was perfect and did not go into the nuances, but what I found out eventually made me feel a bit embarrassed as a practitioner and it got me thinking about how far back the Chinese metaphysics field has fallen back and how more there is to learn. This is what I mean:
If you’ve been following me on Facebook, you would have seen me post the above image a few weeks back.
Due to the pandemic, I spent a lot of time revisiting Chinese metaphysics theory and history. It eventually brought me back to Feng Shui’s history and whatever else I could get my hands on. I have to thank Wester astrology for this because there is a lot of buzz going on about the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that will be happening at the end of this year – 21st December 2020, to be exact. I even downloaded an app to play around:
The moment I heard this, something sprang. Isn’t a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction a feng shui concept too? Why is it almost four years early? I knew of the 20-year feng shui major cycle representing Jupiter-Saturn conjunction a long time ago when I was studying feng shui on my own, but it just didn’t occur to me that it was happening on in December 2020 because I’ve always naively assumed it would be in 2024.
I went to dig up the exact times when Jupiter and Saturn meet according to modern astronomy – you’ll see that in the first three columns. The “Chinese Year” column was written down in the Chinese classics, where Period 1 started way back in 1864.
The longer the time, the bigger the discrepancy between the two systems. It’s expected because the 20-year cycle is not exact years but an approximation, which is why certain years only take 19 years. The small discrepancies increase over time, and you’ll see that by the time we reach 2119, the difference will increase to 5 years. You’ll see that in 2024, Jupiter and Saturn are already way off alignment.
Jupiter and Saturn take 19.859 Julian years to conjunct, so that small difference contributes to the discrepancies over time. “20” is too perfect and round a number.
The end of a major cycle happens in 2044, which is the end of Period 9. A major cycle is when Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury align. According to the ancient Chinese, it’s supposed to happen in 2044, but the next one is on 8th September 2040. The Chinese system is about four years late.
8th September 2040 is when the celestial clock resets itself. If you can’t get what I mean, please refer to this article: Planets for Dessert. If you haven’t noticed, if we were to deduct 180 years from 2040, it would be 1860, which is 4 years apart from the start of Period 1 in 1864. This 4 years is the round up error you see in the table above, meaning enough time has passed for the error in the Chinese system of time-keeping to give rise to a difference of 4 years.
I initially thought it was due to our ancestors using a different system, which had something to do with the 9 Palaces and 9 Stars, but there was no conclusive evidence. The feng shui period will always represent the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction because that’s how our ancestors measured time. You can also tell from the image above that Jupiter and Saturn are already way out of alignment by 2024.
I feel ashamed because I should have found out earlier instead of waiting for 2024 to be close or for another form of astrology to point this out to me. As much as I hate to admit it, other forms of astrology have a lot of things that Chinese astrology does not. The numbers 3 and 4 might be small, but 3 to 4 years is a long time, and many things can happen in one’s life.
If there’s one rule in Chinese metaphysics, it’s not to discount even the smallest details, so we can’t say these 3 to 4 years difference isn’t going to make a huge difference in someone’s life. There’s an old Chinese saying 「失之毫厘，差之千里」, meaning a miscalculation in millimetres can lead to an error in kilometres.
Feng Shui Period 9 Comes Early: What Does This Mean For Me?
Layman or practitioner, we all know that feng shui changes, and it’s a cycle, so it’s natural to assume that major changes are coming and everyone will feel it. The biggest hiccup is that all of us thought this would happen in 2024, but it turns out it will be December 2020 instead – which is in the middle of the pandemic.
I don’t think we need anyone to tell us just how much the pandemic has affected us and made us shift our mindsets and priorities. This is not just an event that happens to you as an individual – the entire world and collective consciousness went through this.
The feng shui quality of all houses will change. There’s no such thing as a house being stuck in a certain feng shui period and being able to tap into good ‘qi’ forever till the end of time – this goes against all theory and Chinese belief.
The houses which were good in Period 8 may not remain good in Period 9, and similarly, houses that aren’t so good in Period 8 might see some improvements. Theoretically, our houses will start to have a different effect on us, but please don’t panic because our astrological charts will come first before feng shui does.
A 20-year cycle is a long time, so it doesn’t mean everyone’s lives start crashing down the moment we hit Period 9. Remember that everything in Chinese metaphysics is a process of unfolding, so these changes will take time to come into effect, just like how you’d feel the changes of an upcoming 10-year phase a few years before the official change and how events start to unfold while you’re in your new 10-year phase.
These changes will have tangible effects on a lot of people. For example, if you invested in real estate hoping you can sell it for a profit when Period 9 comes, then I hope you did your math correctly. Those in the right industries will also benefit.
Changes In Feng Shui Period 9: Trends, Industries, Society
I usually try not to blog about things I don’t fully understand, which is why there are fewer feng shui articles on my blog. I need to see and experience something for myself before I’m confident in writing about it. But I guess studying Qi Men Dun Jia has clarified many things in feng shui because the 9 Palaces (九宫) are integral to both Qi Men Dun Jia and feng shui.
The 9 Stars in Qi Men Dun Jia are the same 9 Stars in feng shui, but they use different names. For example, Star 8 (八白左辅) is also known as 天任 in Qi Men Dun Jia which is an Earth star. Hence you’ll hear a lot about Earth-related industries doing well once Period 9 arrives.
Whenever a feng shui period changes, it is believed that society will change. Trends, leading industries etc., will all change. This is something Western astrology believes in because the entire globe is experiencing a shift.
You will hear that Period 9 is associated with the ‘li‘ Trigram (离卦) because the original position of Star 9 (representing Period 9) is in the South (top-middle box in the image below). Bear in mind this is the Later Heaven Trigram (后天八卦):
Everything associated with the lí (离) Trigram will get much more attention. The lí Trigram can represent things like technology, technology, media, and art, to name a few. The list goes on. Lí also suggests separation or a form of hollowness or ethereal state because lí here is Fire, and Fire is not something tangible that you can touch, which is why you suddenly see a lot of attention in crypto and the metaverse and these two industries have the themes and essence of the lí Trigram.
Star 8 (八白) from Period 8 will be known as the receding star (退运星)， meaning its effects and what it stands for will start to take a back seat. Industries representing that will also not do as well. The industries that are most representative of Period 8 are finance and real estate, which you can already see trending down.
Star 9 is also known as the Purple 9 Star (九紫星), which is known as the ‘You Bi’ (右弼) star. Its astronomical name is the Alcor star which is a binary star, so you’ll always hear of ‘Zuo Fu You Bi’ (左辅右弼) because they are meant to be a pair. They’re very auspicious stars in Zi Wei Dou Shu. It’s known as an amplifier star, meaning the good will be even better, and the bad will get worse. Whether you get to tap on the positive side of this star depends on your house layout and its feng shui implications. Health-wise, it can represent the heart, eyes and blood, so you may start seeing health trends related to these.
One can argue that COVID-19 is a signal and progenitor for this major change, and you could say it’s the celestial event of Jupiter and Saturn having a conjunction. I know some people are already struggling with their condo mortgages. This pandemic might shock the system into a more balanced state and get people thinking more about how they manage their money and what work means to us. Not to mention, technology has come to the forefront during this period too.
We’ll have to wait and see. Feng Shui Period 9 has just begun, after all.
What Can I Do Now That Feng Shui Period 9 Is Coming?
Some of my clients and friends have been asking me what they can do to prepare for Period 9 because it sounds like a huge deal. From what I’ve studied, I think it is a big deal, but many of us will experience it for the first time while being aware of the changing of periods.
Here are some of the things I feel everyone can do:
- Think about whether the industry you are in is still relevant. Being stuck in an industry that is not growing puts your long-term trajectory to a halt. Your career and financial progress will be impeded.
- Go back and look at your investments, especially real-estate investment ones.
- Try to understand whether any part of your life will have some form of fundamental change. For example, is the company you’re in doing well? How is your parents’ health? Do you still have any relationship issues you’ve not sorted out? Does debt burden you?
The above list goes on, and they are things everyone should already know, and it’s not something you need a financial advisor or astrologer to tell you. This celestial event, or entering a new feng shui period, is a good time to slow down and think through life.
I think most people would be most worried about whether the houses they’re staying in now will affect them in any way. The quick answer is “yes”, but not in the way most people would think. As I’ve always said, the house you’re in paints a similar story to your astrological chart, so it’s not that the house is going to put a curse on you – you’re meant to go through a transition with the house you’re in.
What Facing Directions Are The Best In Period 9?
There will always be a so-called “best” or “worst” Facing Direction in every feng shui period, and I’ve been getting my clients to make house purchases that take Period 9 into account. Yes, certain directions are deemed better in Period 9, and some favourable directions in Period 8 are now the worst ones in this new Feng Shui Period.
I’m not going to state the best directions here, not because I don’t wish to share. Firstly, this information is already very public and is not some secret. Secondly, and more importantly, there are too many other things to consider when purchasing a home, such as your house feng shui layout and landform rather than just your facing direction. I don’t want my input to cause anyone to be overzealous and rush to buy a house just because I stated the so-called “best-facing direction” on my blog. Besides, most people are measuring their facing directions wrong.
At this juncture, what worries me most is that many houses that are “OK” in Period 8 will fall under “worst Facing Direction” in Period 9. Many ‘practitioners’ still advise people to purchase houses based on Period 8’s configurations.
I wrote a blog post on how the houses built these days reflect societal trends. Mind you, these aren’t positive societal trends. This still holds in Period 9 and all Periods. But whether or not Period 9 benefits society, in general, is something I’ve not spent time looking at yet.
Whatever it is, you should be planning your real estate decisions extremely carefully at this point.
Where Feng Shui & Chinese Metaphysics Can Improve
Chinese metaphysics will have to evolve along with the times. Undoubtedly, our ancestors were amazing to come up with all these without technology, but I don’t think it hurts to revisit what our ancestors passed down to us and tweak the necessary parts. However, that’s easier said than done.
Perhaps the simplest way to put it is this: Most modern-day astrologers are not astronomers, although we are supposed to be. Whereas in the past, if you were an astrologer, you were definitely an astronomer as well. I always believed that you have to be a bit of an astronomer if you wish to be an astrologer, but I have to admit it’s an acutely painful process to learn astronomy. Knowing astronomy opens up a whole new perspective, and it helps one appreciate just how amazing our ancestors came up with all this without telescopes or technology.
The feng shui period conundrum is a very good example of how the system is not perfect, and it has to adapt and adjust. It’s been 159 years, after all. Another example would be interpreting BaZi charts for gay couples – you won’t find anything about homosexuals in the Chinese classics. Still, we know that homosexuality existed way back in feudal China. Chinese metaphysics will have to adapt and come up with new observations to explain things in the modern world.
I’ll always be the first to admit that I don’t know everything. Pretending that I do is only going to harm others. There’s still much to learn, and I make mistakes too, but I’ll always make it a point to keep reading and getting better at what I do.
I don’t want to start on how feng shui items, crystals and whatever are legitimate feng shui practices. They will always be nonsense that only scammers and charlatans use. It is extremely insulting to Chinese thought and culture to turn what our ancestors studied into something so reductive that a few simple items can influence or even alter nature’s laws.
If you have any friends who are interested in feng shui and they are the kinds who like to make major decisions based on feng shui Periods, do share this post with them.
I hope everyone understands why I always say feng shui is not about furniture arrangement and colours – that’s new-age nonsense that is unfortunately popularized in the West and found its way into the East.
I’ll end this somewhat technical post on a personal note.
I know my website URL has the word “master” in it – it’s only there for practical reasons. But I have never once addressed myself as “master” or “Master Sean”. I address myself by my name. The word “master” makes me cringe, so I went to “Chinese Metaphysics Consultant” right from the beginning, which is a mouthful, I know.
Most people cannot appreciate how messed up the feng shui industry is. People who proudly declare “Feng Shui Masters” with a lineage, and even the world-famous ones who hold live seminars for thousands, seem to be ignoring that whatever was being passed down needs a bit of an update or revision. Virtually all of them attributed the pandemic to the fact that it was a 庚子 year deemed inauspicious, which I can’t entirely agree with because no Pillar, in itself, is regarded as auspicious or inauspicious.
Whatever I’m proposing above shouldn’t be regarded as rocket science or something that’s deemed as a profound insight. It really just requires a basic understanding of how the Chinese in the past developed these time-keeping systems.
For my new readers, I hope you believe me when I say I’m a self-taught practitioner and that I studied straight from the Chinese classics. It’s not difficult for me to pick up a new method like Qi Men Dun Jia because the theoretical foundations are the same, just that it’s being applied differently. When you understand how the cosmos work and the origins of the Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, and 9 Trigrams, it’s not that difficult jumping from one technique to another.
I’m not someone who will be satisfied with just knowing the application, and I never will be. I’m the kind that needs to understand how things work, and I’m always trying to put myself in the shoes of our ancestors. If I weren’t, I would have gotten so far in my career as a practitioner at my age. This blog post you’re reading right now would also not have been possible.
I think everyone knows how strongly I feel about this field, and I often speak up about the malpractices and everything that is wrong with this field. I get a bit peeved when I know an unethical practitioner reads my blog, copies and learns from it, and then continues doing things I’m against. Everything I write about is suddenly adapted into an unethical ‘practitioners’ business. This fact fuels much of the displeasure my regular readers can feel via the tonality of my blog.
So far, there is no other feng shui master or practitioner who has come out to say that Period 9 starts on 21st December 2020, and everyone is sticking to 2024. I know I’ll be copied eventually, which has happened many times. Still, I’ll have to put down my ego and see that this will be valuable information for everyone, even if it’s just applying theory. I always write about how our BaZi charts are our karma, so I guess I’ll just let things play out according to Heaven’s will and trust that the unethical practitioners will get their karma.
Moving forward, I will try to let go of any negative feelings and focus on you guys – the reader. I hope you guys enjoy my blog. If you wish to see more such posts, don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter or follow me on my Instagram page.
Don’t forget to share it if you don’t mind! Stay safe, and keep in touch! If you enjoy this blog post, you might also want to read this:
P.S. To the pseudo-practitioners thinking of copying this. I dare you. Don’t make me expose everything wrong and unethical you did. I know you’re reading this.
[The content of this blog post has been updated for clarity and structure.]
