Am I on the right track? Water & earth in my living room. Should I introduce metal and fire? >Fire & metal in my home office. Should I introduce earth or water? Thank you for your help.

Sorry, can you clarify how you derive " Water & earth in my living room "? Is it because one part of your living room has the Water (North) and I assume North East is the (Earth)?

Usually when we apply the 5 elements concept we do not have a `pairing' like what you suggested e.g. earth or water, metal and fire. But rather, a more accurate way is check a person's main element and strength. For example if the person's main element is Strong Fire and his bedroom is located at the North. We can introduce the colour blue in his bedroom to cool down his strong fire.

This is based on the Principle of equilbrium i.e. a person's element should not be either Strong or Weak. For example if your main element under the Pillars of Destiny is a Strong Fire as mentioned above, in general, you should not introduce Fire (Pink, Red or Purple). The addition of this would (depending on the year). Lets say that for this year, the Lunar new year season is dominated by Wood, under the 5 elements concept, Wood "fuels" Fire and if you add `pink' you are increasing the intensity of the person's element which so happens to be already a strong Fire element. What happens? The person may get burnout or face pressures at work, competition etc.

Alternatively if another person has the main element of weak Fire, in the above situation, the above would help him to make his weak Fire element strong.

Lets assume that you do not know your Pillars of Destiny main element and strength. What happens? You have to use your intuition or do it by trial and error. This may or may not cause consequences to you depending on how good or bad you apply your `cures' or `enhancements'. Perhaps you may want to take note that most of our houses are not mansions and do not have the east wing or west wing etc. therefore, not to add confusion to yourself, do not analyse a room into a few `zones' eg. North and NE if you can. If you cannot ascertain whether your room is a North or NE room, then, try not generally state that the room is eg. of the Water or Wood element. But rather, consider the entire house based on the direction of the main door. If the main door is at West, then treat this house as a West house.

In fact, here in Singapore, we are at the Southern part and all houses in a " macro level " can be treated as a house with the Fire element. This is not wrong.

What I am trying to elaborate is that if we own a palace or a mansion, we easily determine that since there is a "North wing" of the building we can pain the rooms in the North `blue'. But if we stay in a `small' house, it would not be practical to paint the North wall blue(water element), the North East Wall yellow (earth element).

In addition to this by using blue to enhance the North, you are actually `increasing' the strength of Water. This is not beneficial to a person who e.g. is a weak Fire person as Water destroys his weak Fire element and can even `extinguish' it. This is bad for this person. For each of us, if our main element is `weak' we should not paint the room with colours that clash with our element e.g. if you are a weak Water person avoid painting the room Red, pink or purple. This also applies to children's room.

There is more in Feng Shui "than meet the eye". Most of us are practising `intuitive Feng Shui' which can be summarised as `Trial and Error' Feng Shui. There is a 50-50 chance of it helping or `destroying' us. Some will say life is a gamble. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.

Cecil Lee
Center for Feng Shui Research
March 1999