Four Pillars of Destiny are used to decipher our life, our character, our relationship (with family, friends, spouse, children, etc.), our career, our wealth, our luck (good, average and bad), etc.
I am contemplating which areas should I focus on. Too many cooks spoiled the soup. Too many topics (at a time) spoiled the accuracy of FPD.
I would like to apologise on the delay of postings. I hope to improve my regular postings in Year 2007 <- new year resolution.
The Chinese characters of the HS and EB will be tough to remember.
Do what I did, remember the elements representing them.
Heavenly Stems (HS):
How do you remember HS & its corresponding elements? Did you notice the similarity with the Cycle of Birth? Starting with Wood, giving birth to Fire, Earth, Metal then Water. Yang and Yin elements alternate (even are Yin, odd Yang).
Another way of remembering will be using the fingers. We have five fingers, each finger comes with at least 2 parts. One finger will represent one element (e.g. Wood), the tip of the finger (Yang), the bottom (Ying).
Earthly Branches (EB):
What about remembering EB & its element? This is trickier. Pivot point is tiger. Yang Wood is the first month in the Chinese Hsia Calendar. It corresponds with HS first "Yang Wood - 甲". Rabbit is the second month and so forth, being ox as the last (twelve) month. Using tiger as the start point, 2 same elements will end with an Earth element. e.g. Tiger and Rabbit (both Wood) will have the next element Earth, likewise for Snake and Horse (both Fire) having Goat as Earth. Through Cycle of Birth, Wood gives birth to Fire, Fire to Earth (omit this when remembering HS elements), Metal and then Water. Using the four fingers (with 3 segments), we can remember this easily.
Note the elements that are related with each finger (except for lower segment - all represented by Earth. Remember Odd is Yang, Even is Yin? Earth of first finger is Yang Earth.
PS: My way of remembering elements is different from Standard Fengshui / Fortune Teller way. Be it whichever way you can remember, learn them - it is the basis of Bazi analysis.
(An example of Four Pillars from Joey Yap's Ba Zi Ming Pan calculator)
Your Four pillars (Bazi) are usually laid out as above.
Starting from rightmost column, it is actually the pillar that represents the year that you are born in. In this example, this person is born in the year of "戊寅" or literally yang earthTiger.
The second pillar from the right represents that month of your birth.
The third pillar with the Chinese character "元日" represents the day of your birth. Note that the right reading of the Chinese character should be "日元" meaning day element. The heavenly stem of this day pillar represents your self-element. Remember your self-element and the cycle of birth and destruction. The self-element represents you. All the other 7 Chinese Characters are related and used to decipher their relations with your self-element. In this example, it is "乙" or yin wood under the day heavenly stem (日元).
The last pillar on the left represents your time of birth.
Henceforth, the Four Pillars are also known as Year Pillar, Month Pillar, Day Pillar and Time (or Hour) Pillar.
If you have consulted a Bazi Master or fortune teller before, you are probably given the Eight Chinese Characters in a row, like 卯寅 乙丑 乙丑 壬午. You can now confidently lay them out as above and at least understand your self-element.
After getting your Four Pillars of Destiny, it should look something like 2 rows x 4 columns of Chinese Characters (Eight main ones).
(An example of Four Pillars from Joey Yap's Ba Zi Ming Pan calculator)
The top row is known as Heavenly Stems (HS), it will be one of these 10 characters, namely:
甲 = jia = first
乙 = yi = second
丙 = bing = third
丁 = ding = fourth
戊 = wu = fifth
己 = ji = sixth
庚 = geng = seventh
辛 = xin = eighth
壬 = ren = ninth
癸 = gui = tenth
The bottom row of four characters are known as Earthly Branches (EB), represented by either:
子 = zi = rat
丑 = chou = ox
寅 = yin = tiger
卯 = mao = rabbit
辰 = chen = dragon
巳 = si = snake
午 = wu = horse
未 = wei = goat
申= shen = monkey
酉 = you = rooster
戌 = xu = dog
亥 = hai = pig
EB is sometimes known as Chinese Horoscope / Zodiac represented by the twelve animals. That's where the similarity ends. You can know your Chinese Horoscope from Four Pillars (look at the right most column of EB. In this example, this person is born on the year of Tiger.
Just remember these 22 characters, their Hanyu Pinyin or literal meaning, they will be of importance use in this blog or any Four Pillars of Destiny. Ignore the small chinese characters under the EB for a start.
How can we 'read' our own destiny? Is it that easy?
Ancient Chinese explained the art of deciphering our own destiny as Ba Zi (八字命理). Westerners called it "Four Pillars of Destiny". Some can it "Eight Characters". Whichever way you like it.
It is the "decoding of Eight Chinese Characters derived from your birth time and date relevant to Solar (H'sia) Calendar". The Solar Calendar is not to be confused with our Chinese Lunar Calendar. Solar calendars are usually term as Tong Shu (通书), you use this book to select auspicious dates for wedding, renovation, making important decisions, etc.
You can get your Eight Chinese Characters from any websites (just get ready your birth date and time - in Western Calendar).
Or try this www.joeyyap.com, look under the tab "Tools", click on "BaZi Ming Pan Calculator". You need to register though.
With this BaZi, you are ON... the first step to discovering your own destiny as it unfolds.
Ps: If you decided to pay for your fortune told, pay me... hahaha. I may not be the expert but I am no conman.
That’s one of the 7 habits of highly effective people. An interesting book (recommended read). You set an objective and achieve it.
But an end could be a new beginning.
In Fengshui, the Cycle of Birth and Destruction explains the five elements in the universe and their relations to one another. Elements need to be in balance so that harmony can exist. There is no beginning or end.
(The diagram show the Cycle of Birth as solid arrow & the Cycle of Destruction as dashed arrows)
Wood gives birth to fire, fire destroys things and become earth, earth is where all metal ores are found, metal will form water dew when condense, and plants (wood) needs water to survive. This is the Cycle of Birth. It is liked a mother-child relationship, e.g. for fire to exist, there must be wood to burn.
Likewise, in the Cycle of Destruction. Wood will use nutrients from Earth thus destroying it, earth will absorb water, water will put off fire, fire melts metal and metal will impede the growth of wood.
How will these benefit me? The basis of this knowledge will form the tools to understanding geomancy. Four Pillars of Destiny talks about knowing your own element and making full use of it. Fengshui explains maintaining harmony with the environment to increase luck. Numbers and Roman Letters in geomancy can be related to five elements. The cycle of birth and destruction is like maths, you need to learn the basis of subtraction, addition, multiplication and division before you can understand the complex equations like area, volume and even differentiation, law of physics, etc.
Thers is another cycle. The Cycle of Weakening, reverse the solid arrows and you will get this cycle. Elements in this cycle do not destroy but instead weaken one another. Destruction and weakening is not bad or negative as we need to maintain balance between the elements to achieve harmony in the universe or with our environment.
Imagine: If there is a flood, won’t it be good to have a huge piece land to hang on? If there is a forest fire, rain/water will be the best solution but earth/sand can still be used to put off/weaken fire.
If we can achieve harmony, problems will be resolved and obstacles minimised. This is what I termed as good luck.
Note the colors related to the elements?
A heated debate that I had with a fren some time back. He said that geomancy is groundless (without proof) and just another thing like religion or superstition, a self-fulfilling prophecy…..*blah…blah*
I am not 100% into geomancy or fengshui or *blah blah*. Like science, there are so many things that cannot be explained but science will try and undercover the underlying reasoning behind each and every details. Who are we to judge? Science is about trial and test...likewise for fengshui.
Like religion or superstition, each and every religious people will stand by their belief and the incident for their GOD exists but who can prove that. Who can we asked? Is the history as so-called correct?
Not all fengshui books will try to explain why you need to perform this action or that.… probably some are common sense answers… some are proven results from Ancient Chinese but it is simply not recognized by science as PROVEN or science is NOT ADVANCED to prove it.
Quoted from Raymond Lo’s Feng Shui & Destiny for Managers, on Stephen Hawking’s essay “Is Everything Determined?” concluded that everything is governed by the set of physical rules of the universe. It is just impossible to know the rules because the equation might be too COMPLEX.
Geomancy could be a topic of science that ancient Chinese has managed to prove but it’s just not compiled due to it’s history…
“Could you have done better if you could go back to the past?” I posted this question to Heow Ming, my ex-boss. A question that will be a definite yes for most of us but he pondered. I will ponder too, as there are going to be a chain of reactions.
Human nature as it is, they will not be satisfied at their current state. It's good that we always strive to be the better man tomorrow but are we really happy with the 'better' achievement?
Are these achievements 'GOD send' or really a result of your hardwork or pure luck?
In ancient Chinese books on understanding destiny (命理 - pronounced ming li), your journey in life is 20% to 30% pre-determined upon birth and can be understood through Four Pillars of Destiny. Hardwork (Education), Luck, Karma (Doing good deeds) and Fengshui (Geomancy) are the rest of the broad components of your own journey.
Through Four Pillars of Destiny (八字 - pronounced Bazi), we are able to capitalize on our inner strengths and 'polish' on our weaknesses. We make decisions everyday, every hour and even every second of our life. Some are good decisions, some are not so good, some are really bad. If we had understand our inner characters, we will probably make less (NOT no) bad decisions and capitalise on enjoying successes.
So, is life about choices or is it supposed to be pre-destined? You take this road and I will take that street.
my new blog on study of life is finally appearing.
this is really dedicated to the Chinese art of studying life through fengshui and bazi.
many people that i have spoken to...especially people with religions, think that fengshui and bazi are 'crap', 'another form of Taoist religion', etc.
for centuries (i will not go into history), the Chinese way of studying life are complicated but proven:
- how does your life evolves throughout your journey?
- how does it determined your destiny & luck?
- what can you use to 'heal' and 'maintain' life?
- how can we be at the RIGHT place, RIGHT time with the RIGHT people?
- how to avoid mishaps?
- how can we take advantage of our inner characters and use it for our career?
- how come some people have more luck than others?
living in your present lifestyle: is it pre-determined or coincidence?
1) predetermined adj : set in advance; "a preset plan of action"; "at a predetermined time" (according to www.dictionary.com)
whereas
2) coincidence n : an event that might have been arranged although it was really accidental. (according to www.dictionary.com)
these are 2 very interesting words. coincidence seems to be an event that is accidental but looks pre-determined or is it so?
take a while, write down your journey in life till now, how many of them are pre-detemined? how many coincidence?
CSL involves very basic fundamentals:
1) Destiny
2) Luck
3) Fengshui
4) Education
5) Accumulating good deeds
Destiny and luck are what you call pre-determined and coincidence events. where and who you are born to is destined, when will you die is destined or pre-determined (but can you change it? probably yes for death since the advancement of technology is able to pro-long life, probably yes if you know when your life is nearing end).
Coincidence events are really based on luck. In the Chinese study of life (CSL), all living beings have tremedous amount of good luck and bad luck penned throughout their journey. When you are in good luck, good 'coincidence' events happen. (e.g. you could be looking for a job and a headhunter firm called you at the RIGHT time, you could be worrying about money and somehow, you strike the first prize of lottery).
So how can we control these coincidence and pre-determined events?
this is precisely what i intend to do in this blog. Do your homework, write out your downs and up in life, we will discuss it over this blog.
