Yesterday I met up with a fellow BaZi consultant from Singapore for casual idle chatter and the subject matter turned to what we call ‘Busybody’ BaZi or 八 卦 八 子。

What you might be wondering is Busybody BaZi?

Busybody Bazi usually has two references:

a) people who learn BaZi expressly for the purpose of being able to ‘find out things about other people’. Usually, this is not a very effective motivation for learning BaZi and rarely results in successful application of BaZi. When you learn BaZi for Busybody purposes, KNOWING is all they are interested in. As such, forget about learning BaZi – might as well just learn Face Reading. (note: the ‘busybody’ basis is also usually the reason why people find Purple Star Astrology ‘better’ than BaZi – it invariably yields lot of curio or novelty information – perfect fodder for the busybody machine.

b) people who ask questions in a BaZi consult ‘just because…[insert reason]‘

Busybody BaZi is absolutely counter-productive in every sense. The reason for learning BaZi ought to transcend merely wanting to know for the sake of knowing. Equally, the reason for asking a question in a BaZi consult ought to transcend merely ‘wanting to know’ without an actual intent to act upon the information or to make use of it in some way.

That’s why at times, not every piece of information that is derived from BaZi is ‘necessarily’ useful. For example, let’s say that I ascertain that a particular person is lazy. However, this person is born with a silver spoon in their mouth and realistically would not have to work for the rest of their conceivable life. To wit, the laziness is an attribute that does not actually contribute to the conversation at hand nor does it form the foundation for any kind of meaningful action (since said person does not actually need to DO anything). And it is actually the reason why focusing on ‘BaZi shortcuts’ (sometimes derived from different Chinese books) about ‘models’ of types of people is not really sensible or practical. And it is also the reason why so called techniques that can be found in Chinese books are arguably not necessarily as useful as being able to wield the fundamentals in a sensible and practical way. Oftentimes, technical information (you know the ‘if you see this and this is present and prerequisite x, y and z are also present, therefore conclusion is e=mc2′) serves to stifle the ability to learn BaZi rather than actually advance it.

Frivolous quickie post today.

My mother is fond of unleashing the occasional pithy Cantonese saying and one of her favourite ones is the one above. Loosely translated it means ‘to see someone’s face does not mean you know their heart’.   The English equivalent is perhaps the saying ‘Still Waters Run Deep’. What the saying is trying to get at is that it is hard to know a person’s true intentions even if you know the person. It is one of those Cantonese sayings that has sort of acquired a life of it’s own – it has become regarded as a truism, without sometimes much regard for whether or not it is actually TRUE. (much like that saying about how Feng Shui Masters can at best, ‘cheat’ one for 10 or 8 years – well, a Feng Shui Master can only bluff you if you don’t know anything at all about Feng Shui)

In this case, this particular saying was thrown into the conversation mix as I was relating to her the tale of a friend’s unfortunate HR problem which resulted in a hire that went decidedly south.

So I attempted to explain to my mother that this popular Chinese saying entails something of a misconception – if one knows BaZi or Face Reading, it is not possible really to be in a situation where you see a person’s face but do not know their heart. Armed with a person’s BaZi (even if incomplete), you know precisely what kind of person they are. You know their fallacies, their inclinations, their motivations, their bad habits, their virtues, their vices…

She of course still maintains: 知人口面不知心

But if you also happen to know face reading, then there’s doubly no excuse for not really knowing what a person is thinking or what their true character is. Sometimes, pithy Cantonese sayings are not truisms.

According to news reports, there is actually a 13th Zodiac Sign for Western Astrology. The CSMonitor has the story that is scientifically complex but potentially astrologically disastrous! Yahoo has 13th Zodiac Sign trending as it’s erm, top search topic. (no surprise since according to the CS Monitor – a very respectable publication – 25% percent of Americans believe in astrology).

In any case, I thought it gave rise to an interesting proposition: what if there was a 13th Celestial animal? (after all, according to one version of the ‘legend’, all the animals in the kingdom took part in the celestial race)

What would that animal be?

Born in the Year of the Gekko

The Bat - the 13th Animal?

I am the 13thssss

I am the Sign of the Chihuahua

(In case anyone thinks this is actually a serious question, it is not. This is a metaphysics blog but I don’t take myself THAT seriously)