I remembered an incident from a few years back. I received a call from a client. He said that the date which I selected for him to move (house) was, according to his mother-in-law, an inauspicious date. It made me very nervous. I was very concerned. Did I make a mistake? Well I could, as I am human after all.

The moment I got back to my office, I switched on my computer, picked up a date reference and check the date again, not once but many times. To my relieve it was an auspicious date. Why then did his mother in law say it was an inauspicious date?

So I ask him for an explanation. He said the date that I have painstakingly selected for him using the Chinese calendar happen to be the 4th in the Gregorian or Western calendar. The 4th in Chinese sounds like “die” and is hence inauspicious!

I had to then explain to him that Feng Shui date selection uses the Chinese calendar and an auspicious date can fall on the 4th on the Gregorian calendar. He said that he understands but it is his mother-in-law and it is better not to go against her. Well mother-in-law wins some of the time!

The same thing happened on another occasion. This time my client said that his mother-in-law referred to the Chinese Almanac (Tong Sing or Tung Shu) and said that the date selected is not suitable for moving.

The first thing that came to my mind is maybe he should ask his mother-in-law to set the date for him. But that would be very immature of me. And so I explained to him.

There are many date selection techniques. In fact so many that Emperor Qian Long (1711 – 1799) commissioned his officials to write a text that combines astronomy and astrology using Chinese and western astronomical data that were available at that time. This book called Xie Ji Bian Fang Shu became a cornerstone classic for the study of date selection and the basis of the Chinese Almanac. The Chinese Almanac is popularly used for selecting dates for marriage, business opening, contract signing, travel, prayers etc

The methods listed in this book are by no means the be all and end all of date selection. Other method continues to flourish e.g. the Grandmaster Dong Superior Days, the Purple White method etc.

Then for Feng Shui, the popular methods include the Xuan Kong Da Gua Date Selection and the Seven Direct and Four Extras Heavenly Star Method.

The results are not always the same.

So how do I approach date selection. I use Xuan Kong Da Gua Date Selection as the basis. Or in other words the dates selected must be a good date using the Xuan Kong Da Gua method. Then among the selected dates, I look out for those who are also auspicious using the Establish Divest 12 Gods method (used in the Chinese Almanac) and the Grandmaster Dong method. With the 12 Gods methods I watch out for those with good stars. So a date that is normally not slated for moving can be used if there are auspicious and suitable stars on that day.

Finally for the superstitious, I eliminate those whose Gregorian date is 4th (sounds like die) or 14th (sounds like surely die) or 24th (sounds like easy to die)!

So the next time a practitioner gives you a date that is not auspicious on the Chinese Almanac, it may not necessarily be a bad one. There are other factors to consider.