cover image Make This Your Lucky Day: Fun and Easy Feng Shui Secrets to Success, Romance, Health, and Harmony

Make This Your Lucky Day: Fun and Easy Feng Shui Secrets to Success, Romance, Health, and Harmony

Ellen Whitehurst. Ballantine Books, $13.95 (226pp) ISBN 978-0-345-50054-0

This introduction to Feng Shui expert Whitehurst's own brand of the ancient Chinese art, ""Lucky Day Shui,"" largely makes good on its promise of fun and ease with simple methods and implementations that won't cost you much money (no need to invest in teak furniture or a burbling fountain), though certain elaborate and seemingly nonsensical rituals may prove less than helpful. Whitehurst starts with the Bagua map, a fundamental Feng Shui tool that divides any given environment into nine different sectors, each representing ""a specific life situation"" (wealth, knowledge/self-cultivation, marriage/partnership, etc.). Each chapter provides simple ""cures"" to apply in each map sector, some more involved and esoteric than others: for instance, eliminating clutter from the wealth area results in clearer thinking about finances, while a cure for debt prescribes a weekly ritual involving transferring one's burden to unripened limes, dipping them in a mix of salt and red spice and then tossing them over one's left shoulder into running water. Though it will prove frustrating for anyone looking to parse practical advice from superstition, those with an open mind will get a fun, rigorous introduction to Whitehurst's variant on Black Hat Feng Shui, and at the very least gain some sound organizational advice and a better appreciation for houseplants.