Ghost month and Hungry Ghosts

Hey guys, welcome to Learn Feng Shui, where you'll learn Feng Shui from a classical point of view taken out the myth and superstition. If you like weekly tips as well as fun folklore tales, you'll enjoy learning Feng Shui with me. Hey guys, the following is a rebroadcast of last year's hungry ghost and ghost month. So today we're going to revisit the topic and talk about why August is the ghost month and learn a little bit about the hungry ghost festivals. We call the month of the ghost, or the ghost month, some people call the hungry ghost month, but it's really just called the ghost month.

And it is indeed the month where Asian culture is celebrated with called the hungry ghost festival. So the ghost month is the seventh lunar month in the Chinese calendar, which is August. It's said that the first day of the month is when the gates of hell open and allow spirits to wander and go on to the world of the living. So the spirit spend the month visiting families feasting at the same time, it says they look for victims. I'm not sure if I believe a ghost would make me a victim.

So there's three important things to do or three days. I'm sorry, they're important during this ghost month. The three important days are the first day of the month, with is which Chinese tradition usually dedicates to honoring ancestors and they usually leave food offerings. offerings, incense, and what is called ghost money or hell notes, which I kind of talked about. Again, these are a little bit of a new concept, the Asian culture.

The first day of the month is when the hunger ghost or sorry the ghost festival is celebrated. And it said that the feces offered to the spirit so that they can return and bring good luck to their families. The last day of the month is when the gates of hell are closed again. So Taoist priest usually perform a chant to inform the ghost that it's time to go back to the underworld. So we know in Asian cultures, there's a very deep reverence and honor for the ancestors and ancestors worship is very big.

And this is one of the months that is, you know, of course said to be the most open. I guess it'd be kind of like our October here or our Halloween here when we, you know, say the fail is thinned and the spiritual more able to enter the world. The reason why it said that this month is called the ghost month I suppose is because when you look at the E. Jean hexagrams for that just kind of represent the months of the year, there's general one that represents the month of August. And the general one that represents the month of August is called stagnation.

So the stagnation hexagram is a representative by heaven on top of earth. And the two actually move away from each other. So heaven moves up and earth moves down and the two never meet thus resulting in a stagnation and a stagnant energy. I think I went over this last year when I did a podcast about the ghost month. However, I want to kind of talk about some of the myths that are associated with the ghost month and the month of August.

So month, month number one is that you're not supposed to make big decisions. So it says bad luck but it does say to counteract the bad luck, tell us in Buddhist priests often first form a ceremony by throwing rice or small food in the air in all directions to distribute them to the ghost. It does say you're supposed to avoid moving into a new home in August. However, you know, we can't always avoid that right. That's not really true.

I would actually use date and time selection. If I wanted to pick a good date and we can't always pick the whole month that we move in. So August is okay. It also says that the children of elderly should not go out late at night. It says people these people are weak and vulnerable and therefore they must present themselves from prevent themselves from being attacked by evil spirits.

Number four, I've heard this before you're supposed to stay away from water. It's fully that when a person dies as ghosts are wondering spirit wants to be reborn in order to expedite the process that ghosts may try to drown a human. Therefore, traveling by sea is also avoided as well. So lucky for us, nobody's gone out of cruises right now, right? People are also advised to always have positive thoughts, especially at night, being too emotionally supposed to make you vulnerable to spirits or being possessed.

Number six, no whistling at night. So it says if you're walking on it alone, that you're not supposed to whistle because this actually attracts the ghost. No one breathes inside a home. I've heard that before. Number nine, don't even mention ghosts.

So you're not supposed to say the word goes. And as we talked about, when we talked about the jaw's paper burning and the hell knows you're actually not supposed to refer to them as ghosts but refer to them as good brother. Number 10, women shouldn't wear high heels. It said that having one's feet elevated from the ground actually leaves them open to being possessed by spirits through the interview points below the ankles. I've never heard this before.

There's another myth that says you're not supposed to take any selfies and that ghost can get trapped in the camera. And if you ever seen the movie Shutter, which I've introduced my son to a while back, it's a pretty creepy movie that shows a girl that only shows up on camera. So highly recommend the movie Shutter. Miss number 12, a dark home or office strengthens the ghost. I did want to point out that I actually don't think that this one is myth number 12.

I'll tell you why I subscribe to master Jo Qing on a app called telegram. So he's an amazing master for Malaysia. And he has all kinds of great content. I've taken some of his courses, but so he's this awesome master. But the other day he put up a post and it made a very good point.

It was kind of a comical post, but I had a apartment building and there were trees actually growing out of the apartment and blocking all the windows. So these trees were actually overgrown inside the building and they were coming out of the windows. And so therefore blocking all the light in the windows and he pointed out the fact that when you have an overly in environment or overly in active environment where sunlight is not coming into your home, you could indeed see ghosts. So I always recommend people to open their blinds and make sure the sun is hitting their front door. And I think this kind of goes along with some stuff I talked about a few weeks ago that you should actually be trimming those hedges and making sure sunlight comes in your door.

So definitely agree with that. Open your blinds guys. Alright guys, well, I hope you enjoyed some of these myths and a little bit of folklore from the ghost month. So I'll be bringing you ghost details all month. This is my favorite topic and one of my favorite things I do is the folklore Friday especially when I get to talk about weird stuff like ghosties.

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