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Memory
By Elliot Tanzer James Allyn Moser June 1950 to November 2008 June 2009 NOTE: If you would like to share any new information about James Moser please email us at: Click here for Email link
 James
has left us. I first met him on a cold rainy night in 1984 after he
moved to California from the Big Island of Hawaii soon after his house
on a remote side of the island was buried in a lava flow. From retreat
in the wilderness he came back with the intention to be part of
something that promoted metaphysical understanding, healing the soul,
and progressing our culture beyond the mechanistic model almost all of
us grew up with. He was very much into re birthing, Tarot cards, and had
begun his studies in astrology and holistic healing modalities. I met him at a monthly astrology networking party I was sponsoring. On that rainy night he was among the few who showed up. Without too many other distractions, we had a chance to share visions and viewpoints. He told me his desire to be part of something educational. As he had just driven down from San Francisco, James was living in the back of his Ford Galaxy. I invited him to assist me with my astrology magazine and the monthly networking parties, which he did. Soon after we rented a house in Santa Monica and for the next year he busied himself selling Ads, inputting names on the mailing list, organizing the monthly networking event, and doing whatever chores needed doing. During this time I mentored him as an astrologer and he attended all of my metaphysics related classes. He even followed me around on a couple of occasion ringing Tibetan cymbals while I did a house clearing. I invited him as an astrologer and Tarot reader to share booths at the LA Whole Life Expos and southern California Renaissance Faire, as he honed his professional skills. Eventually, we stopped doing our small monthly networking events, and he went off to develop his own consultation practice and soon was also teaching classes around the Los Angeles area. Then in 1989, he told me he was headed to Berkeley to take classes in Feng Shui. Fang what? I was amazed that there was a branch of Chinese metaphysics that I was totally unaware of. Though I wanted to learn this new stuff as well, I was already on a different trajectory back to Maui where I had lived previous to moving to LA. Five years later James came to visit me on Maui, introduced me to Feng Shui, and invited me to attend his next Feng Shui Practitioner's Training in Santa Fe, NM. Which I did. Thank you James. He told me, that it was soon after his Feng Shui training in Berkeley with Prof. Lin Yun, while sitting on the deck of the house he was renting in San Pedro overlooking the Long Beach harbor, while watching the container ships coming and going – many with names like China Rose, Pearl of the East, and so forth, that a light bulb turned on over his head. What the growing Feng Shui community needed was a place dedicated to supplying Feng Shui remedies and enhancements. And thus was born the Feng Shui Warehouse, the first such mail order catalog in the United States and eventually one of the largest online distributors as well. Part of the success of the Feng Shui Warehouse was an ever growing mailing list. Our little list of a thousand names had now become a list of thousands of names. Then James took another gamble. In the Fall of 1995, he published the first magazine dedicated to Feng Shui, the Feng Shui Journal. Using the Feng Shui Warehouse and the Feng Shui Journal as a spring board, James soon became the center of the Feng Shui community in the western world. In 1996, James went to the next step, and organized the first of four International Feng Shui Conferences. The first in San Diego, the town where James had relocated, and where he established his Feng Shui Warehouse. This conference attracted over 600 people. Then there was one in Palm Springs and Monterey, and the last in Orlando, FL in 2001 which drew well over a thousand people. All the conferences presented a wide array of presenters, not just on Feng Shui, but also from such related fields of sacred geometry and healthy building (now called green design). Perhaps most important of all, each of these Conferences were wonderful gatherings of like minded people, or as James thought of them, "family get together-s", complete with a round of golf on Sunday after closing ceremonies. Unfortunately, unlike his first three conferences convened in California, James chose the fourth conference scheduled for Aug. 2001 in Orlando, FL. A location too far for him to organize from San Diego, at a time when people weren't traveling as much across country and from Europe, and at a hotel much more expensive than the final turnout could justify. For the first time James lost money on the deal and left some people unhappy and alienated. Though he tried to shrug it off as the risk of doing business, it was something that greatly disturbed him to the end. When you win, everyone loves you; when something doesn't work out as intended, regardless of all the best efforts, some people will remember you by the last impression. Towards the end the Feng Shui Warehouse era the regular mail and e-mail grew to tens of thousands by a combination of opt-in e-mail and by "snail mails". Amazingly an equal number of weekly tips through e-mail signups delivered the Feng Shui Tips of the week twice weekly coupled with a mail catalog the online product demand could not keep up with the orders at times. By using a unique online marketing strategy his webmasters reported that the logs were showing a high of fifty thousand hits per day on the Feng Shui Warehouse website by 2001.
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