The Chinese teachings
The Plum Blossom Branch
Explore Chinese zodiac traditions, the five phases, the Book of Changes, and our reflective adaptations of oracle, home, and tea practices.
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Lessons on this branch
Follow the path in order, or open the lesson that calls to you.
The Plum of the Tree
The plum opens on a bare branch in the cold, and a whole way of reading the moment opens with it.
Twelve Ways to Cross the Same Cold Water
The twelve animals, the Great Race that set their order, and the sixty-year cycle that names your year.
Five Ways the Year Turns
Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and the two cycles that move between them.
The Book of Moving Water
How the oldest book of changes reads a moment by stacking lines, and why nothing it shows you is fixed.
The Asking-Arts of Old China
A family of small rituals from China for putting one clear question to the world and reading how it answers.
The Room Breathes, The Leaf Wakes
Two slow Chinese arts, feng shui and the way of tea, taught as one practice: paying close attention to where you live and what you drink.
The Way of Tea (Cha Dao)
What cha dao and gongfu brewing actually are, the small vessels, and a simple home ceremony you can keep, steep after steep, with nothing fancy.
How to Read the Tea Leaves
Drink the cup down, swirl it, turn it over, and read what clings, by where it sits and which way it points. The whole simple method of tasseography.
The Bagua, Room by Room
The nine-square map at the heart of feng shui, what each life-area means, where it sits, and how to lay it over your own home tonight.
The Eight Trigrams
Heaven, earth, water, fire, thunder, wind, mountain, lake, the eight three-line figures that underlie the bagua, the I Ching, and the whole Chinese cosmology.
The Five Elements at Home
How the wu xing, the five Chinese elements, feed and check one another, and how to use their two cycles to balance any room.
Compass vs. Black Hat Feng Shui
The two main schools of feng shui, the traditional compass (Lo-Shu) method and the Western Black Hat method, what each one does, and which to use.