Inviting in Opportunity for the Spring Equinox

Hey guys, welcome to the Learn Feng Shui podcast, where you'll learn Feng Shui from a classical point of view, taking out the myth and superstition. So if you're interested in learning Feng Shui, Chinese astrology, all things Chinese metaphysics, as well as the superstitions and myths that connect it all, you'll enjoy learning Feng Shui with me. Guys, today we're going to talk about spring cleaning, Feng Shui, your home for spring, and ancient sites that align to the spring equinox. Hey guys, how are you all doing? I'm Candice Berlanga, your host of the Learn Feng Shui podcast.

Today we're going to talk about all things spring equinox as we come up on it, here for March 20th, that Jatchi cycle, just switch over and translate to spring equinox. So welcome to spring. We might be getting ready to plant flowers and do all kinds of spring cleaning, maybe spring clean our yard. So today we're going to get into, how can we get our house ready for spring from a Feng Shui perspective? And also what kind of flowers and symbolism we can put out for spring.

We have this lovely year of the rabbit, which of course we look at that and we look at that translating into flowers or vines, that Yin would energy. And we're also going to talk about the five ancient sites that align with the spring equinox. It's going to be a little bit shorter of an episode because my gaze on spring break. So let's get into it. All right, so when we're thinking about Feng Shui, a couple of things come to mind, and I want to kind of get away from like the hard and faster rules of Feng Shui for this episode, and really kind of look at a little bit more symbology and a little bit more of using our senses around our home to create a home that feels welcome to us.

And one of the biggest things in Feng Shui, of course, is visual. So when we're talking about the five senses, visual is very important. Feng Shui literally is part of the five arts of Chinese metaphysics, and it falls into the category of physiognomy. Well, Phineo, physiognomy is actually a study of the shape or appearance of something. And so when we're looking at Feng Shui, it's literally the appearance or shape of the space we have around us in our environment.

It's a study of our visual environment. And so it's taken it just from there. Of course, things like decluttering are important, but maybe start tackling some of those closets, you know, tackling a few things here and there, tackle one culprit at a time, you know, don't make it super difficult for yourself. But we do to accumulate things over winter time, and spring really is about getting out and a renewal, right? It's really about this renewing energy.

And so getting rid of things that are no longer serving us and making room should bring in new things as well as visually appealing environment. So remember that visual clutter does increase stress, and so we want to make sure not increasing our stress around us. So just starting to tackle the things like our visual clutter, the things we see first before we tackle our cabinets might even be helpful also. Let's also go to the front door. Let's talk about some things we can do to welcome in some good energy using the front door.

So when we're looking at our front door, I think it's kind of generic to say that the mouth of cheese the front door, right? We hear this all the time. What does that really mean? And how does that apply to us? You know, how do we use that?

Right? So one thing the first thing is, I think is literally using your front door. So remember that your front door is supposed to be an open up to what is called your main tongue or your bright hall. And in a lot of cases, like a living room, so directly outside and directly inside is what is called that bright hall area. And it is the space around our home that is supposed to accumulate and then circulate the energy you're the Chi within our home.

And so if we think about if it's a cluttered area, we're blocking that energy from coming into our lives. And if we kind of take that a step further, we can literally look at this the kind of symbolic meaning of this in our lives. And so we know that our environment reflects what's going on inside of us, right? As as within so, you know, externally or as above so below, right? And so when we think about the front door and we think of things like being blocked around the front door, or maybe, you know, you can barely open it or there's always a lot of clutter around it.

It's kind of a catch all area. You know, maybe that symbolizes that we're actually blocking our opportunity for our own lives. If it's in disrepair, we've just tend to ignore, you know, the squeakingness or whatever what isn't disrepair in our lives also. And so we want to make sure that, you know, symbolically also our home is reflecting how we feel inside. And remember that front door in some perspectives does represent like the mouth or the opening, you know, and opportunity.

So we want to make sure that we're opening opportunity to ourselves as we open that door and we bring in energy to circulate. Kind of rounding back to the topic of decluttering. One thing you can do is actually use date selection to declutter your home. And it not only works for decluttering and cleaning your home, but it works also for like energetic cleanings and energetically cleaning your home and yourself. So it's a good day for you to clean declutter, get rid of things from your home.

You know, take all the trash out and also energetically clean your home with sage, open the windows up and you yourself maybe like take a saw bath sage yourself or do some sort of spiritual cleansing. Coincidentally, it's also a good day to do things like follow for divorce or interrelationship that no longer serves you, you know, cut ties with toxic people. And if you're in a business, this is a good little tougher business owners, you can use it as a day to drop prices or clearance, you know, start clearance items. They all right, it's a good day to remove things, so including remaining inventory and, you know, messy divorces, right? So get rid of the get rid of the person on the removed day.

And so not all days are equal, some are better than others to do these things, but just generally looking at what is called a Chinese almond acro tong shoe, you look for what is called a removed day. Let me quickly read from the personal date selection by Julie Yatt. And this kind of explains it, right? It says, each of the 12 day officers or governing body of Qi has a use and function. So the trick in using this technique for date selection is to match the day officer or body of Qi to the activity that you have in mind.

So it's like an energetic support of the activity you're in a perform. So to utilize this, you simply look on what is called the tong shoe for a good removed day on my website. I usually put all that in there, but sometimes there's not like a quote unquote, good day. I mean, you don't have to specifically wait for a good day to do any of these cleansing or clearings or anything like that. The good days are typically more for doing a big fungshway activation, but of course, the good energy on a good day will support you, even stronger, I suppose.

So you don't have to wait for those quote unquote good removed days, just use any of the removed days in the month. Moving on now and keeping with the theme of the five senses, let's look at smell, aroma therapy and essential oils. Of course, are big in some circles of fungshway. We like to also have that visually appealing environment as well as the smell. I know I love too clean and after I clean, I usually will have the diffuser going or light some candles or put a burn upon to something.

And of course, we know that smells can trigger memories very strongly. And so you might want to use a scent that is connected to something you remember or something that you, you know, a nice pleasant memory you have. But here from fungshway for real, life.com, there's an excellent article and there's actually another one I'm going to put up to that has a really good article about scent for spring. There's just like a lot to put in there, so I don't want to read off every scent and research it. But it's an excellent article about using different scents and essential oils in springtime.

So this one here, it says, since an aroma therapies are used in fungshway to encourage balance harmony and to trigger specific emotional responses since can be released to the indoor environment in a variety of ways, including essential oils, candles, incense, room sprays, and aroma therapy machines. So here, I really like this list, the areas that you can use these different scents on and why. So here again, talking about the front door, it says you can use vanilla around the front door for well-being. You can in the living room, you can use cinnamon for harmony and intellectual conversation, lavender for relaxation, and basil for cheer. In the kitchen, you can use citrus, so either orange lemon or limes for cleansing and stimulating your mind and improving your mood.

I actually like the lemon and orange since a lot in my house. In the dining room, you can use mint to cleanse your palate and encourage appetites and reduce your stress level. In the bathroom, you can use clove, cedar, and sandalwood to stimulate and balance the over abundance of water in the sector and make it feel more balanced. That's a good idea. I've never heard of using different like woody type scents for the restrooms.

So I like that. In your master bedroom, you can use lavender for relaxation and sleep, rose and cardina, yellowing, musk and jasmine for love and romance. In your children's room, you can use lavender for relaxation or vanilla to encourage family harmony. In your office, it says citrus to clear your mind and concentrate, peppermint to stimulate prosperity, rosemary for memory, geranium for self-esteem, bergamot for wealth and eucalyptus when you need to stay up late and finish a project. In your workout room, you can use strawberry to encourage exercise and movement.

And it just says a whole house is of course a sage as the part of a cleansing ritual to clean stale air. And of course, I highly recommend opening up your windows and letting the gene energy flow through while you're doing this sage. And of course, any negative things can also be a shoot away from by opening windows and doors and stuff while you do this age. So after we've decluttered and we got our scent going, you know, our house is feeling good. The little cherry on top of the cake here, the little cherry topper is adding a vase of fresh flowers.

I think it makes every home feel lovely. But however, one of the things we can do is kind of use that symbology and intentionally place out some flowers, whether it's, you know, their fake or they're real, you know, we can think about the symbolism. So when we think about the different paintings and stuff like that from a Chinese cultural perspective, they always use some sort of symbology like birds of paradise plum, you know, or peach blossoms, so kind of just looking at what different flowers mean here from farmertomonac.com, which I'll link to below. It has a giant list of all kinds of flowers and herbs and stuff. But just kind of looking at the ones we generally put in a bouquet or, you know, we generally will grab from the market.

You know, of course, first is babies breath and babies breath symbolizes ever lasting love, calories symbolize beauty. Carnations have some different meanings, but generally female love or mother's love. And I think that's why it's really traditional to give carnations to a mother on Mother's Day. However, red carnation means that you have a heartache. It says a deep love also.

A white carnation represents innocence, pure love and sweet love. A pink carnation is like, you know, never forgetting somebody. However, a striped carnation is refusal and a yellow carnation means disdain, disappointment or rejection. Similarly, with roses, I think red always represents that passion, you know, and if we think of the color red and funchway, that's also what it represents. So red roses mean I love you.

Dark crimson is a color of mourning. The pink represents happiness while white represents innocence. And then yellow represents jealousy. So something about the yellow flowers. It also represents decrease of love or infidelity.

Just a kind of funny little aside, yellow roses were my grandmother's favorite. However, she always had a tumultuous relationship. So makes you wonder right? And Zene is a pretty popular represents the thought of an absent friend or lasting affection. And the lilies of the valley represent sweetness, tears of the Virgin Mary and humility.

If we kind of look at herbs, I know some people like to have herbs in their kitchen or a little herb garden. So a basil represents good wishes, a dill represents power against evil, parsley represents festivity, and mint represents virtue. So after learning that, what flowers and plants do you want to put in your house? We'll take a quick little sponsor break and we'll be back with the Folkler Friday segment. Five ancient sites built to align with the spring equinox.

From Atlas Obscura.com, five ancient sites built to align with the spring equinox. So as you probably know, March 20th does mark the spring equinox. And here reads that equinoxes and solstices are reliable ways to mark the seasons. And human civilization throughout history have monitored such astronomical phenomena incorporating these events into their cultural and religious practices. Today, the evidence of these practices can be observed through the buildings and structures that are ancient ancestors left behind.

To celebrate the equinox, they compile the list of ancient structures designed to interact with astronomical arrival of spring. Number one, El Castillo at Chichen Itza. El Castillo is also known as the Pyramid of Gukukon. It is the 79-foot pyramid at the center of the ancient Mayan site of Chichen Itza. Built around 1000 AD, the structure was built to create a fantastic visual effect during the spring and autumn equinoxes.

During the equinox sunset, light hits the pyramid at an angle creating what appears to be a shadow of a massive snake as it slithers down the pyramid steps. It could be coincidence, but of course we know our ancient ancestors right. It says many argue that the pyramid, many sculptures representing the feathered snake god imply the effect was intentional. And I tend to think that is true. They definitely align their buildings with a purpose back then.

Number two, I hope I'm saying this right, Magdra. So the Magdra temples on Malta consisted of three structures built over a period of a thousand years beginning around 3600 BC. The buildings are a remnant of what was once a much larger complex and its lowest temple may have been used as astronomical and calendrical site, interacting with the equinoxes and solstices. According to observers, the spring equinox sunrise bisex the entrance of the lower temple, shining light through the main passageway into a small shrine within the complex. Details of the civilization that built Magdra are scarce so it's difficult to determine the exact motivations behind this design.

Number three, Angor Wat. In Cambodia, Angor Wat was constructed and oriented to interplay with astronomical events throughout the year. In a 1976 article in Science magazine, details discoveries that a group of University of Michigan students researchers discovered. They numerically and astronomically analyzed the temple constructed between 1113 and 1150 AD. On the spring equinox, the researcher wrote, an observer standing at the southern edge of the first projection on the causeway just in front of the western entrance gate can see the sunrise directly over the top of the central tower of Angor Wat.

The University of Michigan team emphasized the significance of the orientation, pointing out that the spring equinox marks the beginning of the sun's annual journey. Regardless of the date of the lunar solar new year, which of course is the same as the Chinese calendar, which observed the lunar solar pattern. Number four, it's Hovenweep Castle. Hovenweep is situated on the now Colorado Utah border and was built between 1213 and 1300 AD in as part of a settlement that was ahead once housed over 2500 people. According to the slide deck prepared by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the castle was likely built as a solar observatory using small ports to track the movement of the sun.

A method of observation still used by the Pueblo people today. Hovenweep actually reveals a slight quark in the solar calendar developed by its builders. According to the UCAR, the equinox port at Hovenweep Castle points to the sunrise that is called asmuth four days after the Vernil Equinox. This is precisely what would be expected if the equinox of asmuth was established by counting and having the number of days between the winter and the summer solstices. So I was actually very surprised because I didn't think the US had ruins that were this old that you know like housed a community.

I really just thought they um I mean we've seen the Pueblos and whatnot that were inhabited by Native Americans, but I never knew about Hovenweep Castle. I'm definitely going to have to make it over there. Next is the Basilica San Patronio. So Bologna's Basilica San Patronio actually played a role in the establishment of the Gregorian calendar that we used today. In 1575 Cosmograph Ignacio Donti arrived in Bologna to research mathematics and astronomy.

In order to continue his work on the commission charged by Pope Gregory with the development of a new calendar, he constructed a meridian line in San Patronia. This meridian line was an astronomical instrument invented by Donti and it consisted of a small hole high on the wall of the church. The position of a spotlight created when the sun shined through the hole allowed Donti to determine and define and analyze the sun's position and movements. It says here this technique was later used by Giovanni Cassini to confirm the elliptical um um orbital model proposed by Johann Kepler. And of course last but not least probably the most famous number five is Stonehenge.

Stonehenge of course it says we can't talk about the ancient equinox observations without mentioning Stonehenge. The world's most famous prehistoric monument is still a destination for those looking to celebrate the equinoxes. According to the BBC nearly a thousand people visited Stonehenge to welcome the spraying last year. English Heritage which manages the site does open at dawn for people to access the equinoxes and solstice events so that pagan druids and early risers can watch the sun a light the ancient stones. Yeah that's my bucket list Stonehenge on a solstice or equinox.

So I am really curious to see if any of my listeners have experienced one of these sites on the solstice or the equinoxes um let me know. Yeah shoot me a little email um again it really is like a bucket list thing to visit some of these sites so I hope you guys enjoyed today's a little bit shorter abbreviated episode um you guys have an amazing weekend I won't catch you next week but we'll be back on the 31st for um April energy update you guys have an amazing weekend. For free energy mapping of your floor plan please check the link in the show notes. To support today's podcast go to learnfungshwe.com sign up for emails leave a review and share it with your family and friends.