[He should take antioxidants to purge “earth” — one of the five universal elements in feng shui — that makes him stubborn and vindictive, others note.]
By
Gerry Shih and Mary Hui
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People
celebrate the Lunar New Year in New York, President Trump’s birthplace
and
the scene of his real estate successes. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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BEIJING
— Years ago before the
presidency, Donald Trump once consulted a master of feng shui — the ancient
Chinese system of geomancy and soothsaying — for a development project in New
York.
Now — as pundits parse Trump’s State of the
Union — feng shui masters in China and elsewhere are busy offering Lunar New
Year prognostications on what the next 12 months will bring in business, love
and, of course, politics.
And what, we asked, does the freshly minted
Year of the Pig have in store for Trump?
It’s a mixed bag.
Some say Trump will get his border wall
funded by August. But, then again, he could face impeachment in the
inauspicious month of March.
He should take antioxidants to purge “earth”
— one of the five universal elements in feng shui — that makes him stubborn and
vindictive, others note.
But his reelection bid for 2020 couldn’t come
at a better time for his feng shui fortunes: his year of water and gold.
With so many fateful questions swirling over
the White House, The Washington Post consulted practitioners in three cities,
including Pun Yin, a second-generation sage of New York’s Chinatown, who
counseled Trump in the mid-1990s.
But first, the predictions.
“Last year couldn’t be worse for strong earth
like Trump, but things will turn around for him,” intoned Raymond Lo, a feng
shui grandmaster and frequent media commentator in Hong Kong who is feted for
correctly predicting the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 — and the Tom
Cruise-Katie Holmes breakup in 2012.
“He’ll still face lots of obstacles and
challenges through spring and summer until August, when water and metal rise,”
Lo said. “But his enemies can forget about impeaching — best time to do that
was last year.”
Why? The president’s fortunes are bound to
improve because his earth-heavy nature will balance with the arrival in 2019 of
the very elements he lacks, Lo explained.
According to the principles of feng shui —
which means “wind water” in Chinese — the fortunes of people, events and places
are governed by whether the five universal elements — fire, water, wood, metal
and earth — can attain equilibrium.
Using birth dates, astrological calendars and
compass-like devices called the luopan, feng shui practitioners calculate the
disposition of individuals and periods when they can expect upswings and
reversals in luck. That’s why Trump, who was born June 14, 1946, during the
Year of the Dog with an unusual preponderance of earth, had a crisis-mired
2018, a year also overabundant in not just earth, but “sinking earth.”
That’s also why Democrats may be dismayed to
hear Trump’s luck will surge going into 2020 — precisely “a year of water and
gold,” said Lo, who urged the president to pay attention to his blood
circulation and up his antioxidant intake.
Outside the Qing Dynasty Lama Temple in
Beijing, Master Rong Xia, concurred that it might be best for Democrats to
strike before August and preferably in March, a bad time for Year of the
Dog-born people such as Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a “very
formidable” dragon born March 26, 1940, will experience more difficulties in
September.
On the top floor of a commercial building in
Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay, Master Yeo Tin Ming — meaning Heaven’s Destiny — laid
out a bit of a truism that’s nevertheless backed up by feng shui.
“Dogs and dragons are opposed. They clash,”
Yeo said. “They have problems communicating with each other. It’s very hard for
them to come to any agreement.”
But Yeung predicted that as the year wears
on, Democrats will relent on building a border wall, although likely with less
funding than Trump hoped for.
Call it pseudoscience or the accumulation of
millennia of Chinese wisdom — feng shui is serious business in Asia, where
masters are leaned upon when picking everything from baby names to
billion-dollar construction sites. They serve as life coaches and business
strategists. They’re also summoned to arrange furniture and position
architectural features — all with the goal of achieving balance in the
elements.
That’s precisely what Pun Yin did in 1995,
when the New York master suggested adding a metal-frame globe outside a new
Columbus Circle hotel, the Trump International Hotel and Tower.
But when asked about Trump’s fortunes today —
the president is no longer her client — the feng shui master didn’t exactly
predict serenity.
“The extreme intensity of the earth element
creates a character that is stubborn, self-absorbed, vindictive and
judgmental,” Pun Yin said. “Based on his five element characteristics, he will
still be obsessed with fame and fortune and react to criticism.”
She advised Trump to absorb the counsel — and
the stabilizing “yin” influence — of his daughter Ivanka, and avoid rushing
into deals this year on denuclearization and trade with North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un or the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, respectively.
But considering the president’s birth year,
Pun Yin downplayed the chances of her old client changing.
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” she
said.
Hui reported from Hong Kong.
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