Part of ancient Chinese belief is that the luck (good or bad) that happens to you during your life depends on the state of the universe when you were born. You use Feng Shui to determine the various enhancements and remedies required to prevent or avoid any bad luck, but first you need to know what that luck is likely to be and when it is likely to occur. The Chinese use a system based on Yin and Yang and their five Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water) to determine a wide range of information about your life and how the world interacts with you.

This Workshop looks at how you can use Chinese Astrology to see how compatible you are with your partner - or potential partner!

In Workshop 2 we looked at your personal Chinese Horoscope, or the Four Pillars. This showed you your personal Elements, and their balance which helps to define aspects of your character. We can use the details of your Elements and those of your partner (actual or potential!) to see how your relationship might work out.

Each Chinese Element relates to the other Elements in a positive or negative way, dependent on the Cycle of the Elements. The following table shows how the Elements relate to one another:

The element in the left hand column acts on the element in the top row (e.g. Wood Helps Fire).

Where:

Balances - the same element, so you will share the same aspects.

Helps - the first element Helps or enhances the second one.

Hinders - the first element Hinders or is unhelpful to the second one.

Controls - the first element Controls the second one.

Dissolves - the first element takes energy from the second one.

As you can see from the table if one Element Helps another, the second element Dissolves the first one. If one Element Hinders another, the second element Controls the first.

In our analysis of the Astrological Relationships we only need to use three of them - Balances, Helps or Hinders.

Now we need to choose which elements to compare. The basic Chinese Astrological elements are those of your Birth Year. We all know whether we are a Rat or a Goat, and this is the Chinese Animal of the Year. Each animal is related to one of the elements - for example the Rat is a Water animal. The Chinese Animal can be used to determine your relationship to do with Earthly Matters - your Career, Study and Business.

We can also use the Heavenly Stem of your Birth Year, which again relates to one of the five elements. This element is used to determine the effect on Spiritual Matters - your Loves, Hopes and Fears.

The final element is chosen to represent the Home, and is the element of your Pa Kua (Feng Shui Compass) number, relating to your Home, Family and Lifestyle.

Figure 1 : Astrological Relationships

Figure 1 shows the astrological relationship between two people who have been selected to have their relationship analysed, and displays each person’s elements in the three categories - Earth, Heaven and Home. The Arrows between each pair of elements indicate the type of relationship (Blue = Hinders, Red = Helps, Green = Balances).

Three Red or Green Arrows suggests a Balanced and Positive relationship, one or more Blue arrows indicates a negative aspect.

Further analysis of the relationship can be found from comparing the Personal Readings for each person - derived from their Chinese Animal, and then looking at the Joint Readings for the two people. Here the characteristics, temperaments and other aspects of the two people are compared to see how well they are matched.

Just for fun the program includes a list of famous men and women whose birth dates you can pick to see how well you would get on with them. Just click on the little ‘camera’ icon between the two names, and a pick list of hundreds of celebrity names and birth dates pops up for you to choose your favourite movie star, sports person or musician.