The history of fortune telling

I said fortune telling theory is neutral theory because it is a discovery. The 10 * 12 method of counting time was originated from more than 4000 years ago. People used this method to do fortune telling since 1000 years ago. So life code is not designed to do fortune telling. We say Chinese worship sky, in fact, they pray from weather, because they are farmers. Even farmers now days have deeper understanding about weather. Weather has patterns, people related patterns of time and patterns of people in time.

Fortune telling is a discovery. The theory itself is people trying to explain it. Actually Lots of expiations are not quite accurate. For example: Water is H2O, Fire is a chemical reaction. The world is definitely not making up by Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. But it doesn’t matter. You can see them as ABCDE if you want. Wood doesn’t equalize to wood, it represents lots of things including wood.

Fortune telling theory is first created by Li Xuzhong who was born 761. He concluded some folk fortune telling agents, and wrote a book. Although he is not the first fortune teller, but we usually agree that fortune telling is originate from him, because he is the first representative of fortune telling. Li made decimal date code as the self code, before him people used the decimal year code as the self code.

The second revolution was brought by Xu Ziping who was born about 900. He introduced some structures and balancing theories. From him, people used agents, structures and some balancing principles together. There are a lot of confusions in fortune telling societies. The other thing that he did is: he added the hour column into life code, and that increased the accuracy of life code greatly. Before him, there were three columns in a life code.

And then there was Ren Tieqiao who was born 1773. He reorganized fortune telling principles into theory we know and expelled superstitious things like “agents” that were not a part of the system. (people anthropomorphized agents, saw them as different gods that in charge of different areas)

For now, there are about three different factions in fortunetelling: Balancing-yielding, Structures and The Blind Group. They all claim to be the most advanced faction. I don’t belong to any factions. I learned fortunetelling by myself since 2009 because I couldn’t find a job for the economic crisis, so I had the time to learn lots of weird stuffs. I first learned it from fortune telling software. I was curious because as long as fortune telling is more accurate than random guess, there must be a reason. After years of researches, I think I am better than most masters I know. How do you know you are better than other people? When you see they are full of mistakes, you are better than them.

Balancing-Yielding is also called the modern fortunetelling theory. As far as I see, it is the academism of fortune telling, because there are reasons behind the calls. As long as a theory has a rational foundation, it can develop. Of course it cannot explain everything. There are unsolved problem in physics, does it mean physics doesn’t work? No, it means physics is hard.

In the structure faction theory, there are certain numbers of structures, in another word, regular routines. First you find the mainstream of a life code, and you apply it to the nearest mode. There are qualification and requirement for each mode. Then you analyze the degree of completion; see how much your life code qualifies for it, which will determine the level of your success.

As far as I see, structures are the typical modes for similar people to make success in the society, because you know, nothing new under the sun. Therefore, the more your life code fits a good structure, the more likely you can be success.

As far as I see, applying modes is a temporary solution, because you need to keep on going. We need to break down to reason, why those modes are good. Then you still will need the principles of balancing and yielding. In another word, a good balancing-yielding theory should eventually include the content of structure theory. For now, there are some cases cannot be explained by balancing theory, but they can be explained by structure theory, this is because balancing theory is still staying at “balancing the self code”. Other elements are not considered as the subjects.

For example, a guy’s life code is 10(6), 2(4), 8(6), 5(11).

According to balancing theory, this person is an overall weak. Only when fortune provided Strength and Shield, he can afford the strong Money and Authority. His fortune: 1(3), 10(2), 9(1), 8(12), 7(11), 6(10). Since the 7(11) fortune, the fortunes will be all Strength and Shield. So he is supposed to be successful after 45.

At the age of 50, this guy is still pretty average, why? If you apply the structure theory, you will see. When Money (4) meets Authority (6), the Money structure is broke. We need to find a structure base on Authority, and his success is depended on Authority. But his fortune is all Metal and Water, no support to Fire so his political career is hopeless. If the fortune can eliminate the Authority, it’s another way to construct a structure, which we abandon Authority and focus on Money. However, the Authority has support and protection from Fire tomb (11) and (4), even pure Water fortune cannot disable it. So this guy is destined to be a regular officer, no chance for him to make big money.

I think the most important thing we can learn from structure theory is: there is only one focus for a life code. For example: Authority supports Shield is good, Talent makes Money is also good. What if I have both? Is that double good? No. because in an Authority supports Shield structure, Money serves as foe; in a Talent makes Money structure, Shield serves as foe. It is like: I am good at soccer as well as tennis. I have to choose, otherwise, I will be neither a soccer player nor a tennis player. You can’t have everything. You need to decide which one structure your life code really is.

Blind people are used to do fortune telling for living. The Blind Group is the underworld society that controlled the fortunetelling market. As the practical style fortune tellers, the blind group have a lot of secrete notes, but their system is much undeveloped. They use rhymes to remember notes. They don’t have a theory, they work on signs. Therefore, they are very good at hitting details, make people like: Oh crap, he knows I have a mole on my feet, how credible is that? Now I believe you completely. The blind’s notes work on lots of people, but I can also provide lots of examples to disprove their notes. Therefore, for some clients they are totally amazing, for some they are full of bull shits.

The problem of abstracting signs is: you don’t withstand inquires. For example: 7(9) can be seen as a road, it also can be seen as an axe. When it represents a road, why not an axe? Or when it represents an axe, why not a road? It’s not fair to say the blind masters are guessing, but their method is not reliable. How did he come out with that? He doesn’t even know. So there is no guarantee for the next time. If you learn with the blind group, you are accumulating (experience) instead of researching. And you need to work on your imagination and association ability.

How accurate is fortune telling? You will see when you are learned. The big things are very accurate, such as fortunes: they are never wrong. Good means good and bad means bad unless you picked the wrong favor and foe. And it will be your own mistake; the fortune isn’t show the wrong information. Fortune is 10 year scale, so it is the most accurate. The year is not that accurate compare to the fortune. And if you trace down to the given day, the information will become very unclear: you go to work and meet your colleague every day. Does that mean every day’s code is your strength? It is impossible, right? Therefore some levels of accuracy is unachievable; there must be some levels of guessing involved. According to Liao-Fan's Four Lessons, the fortune teller even got his place in the exam right. Fortune telling is a probability theory, with the secrete notes of the blind group, fortune tellers can guess better than random guesses, but they are still guessing. I mean even they got the answer right, they are defiantly not using reliable and repeatable methods. For example: Mr. Liao-Fan was destined to be placed number 14 because his life code, really? I had twin classmates in my class, they have the same life codes, are they supposed to get the same place every time?

Traditional fortune telling is not an honest stuff. They don’t tell you which parts are reliable and where are the uncertain factors. I think they just dig a hole for themselves. Have you watched the movie farewell my concubine (1993)? How did traditional Peking Opera troupe train their disciples? The master could beat them to death. Why? Because the bar was raised too high, if you didn’t take a harsh training like that, you can't survive in the business. This is digging a hole for yourselves, because you created the harsh environment and made yourselves harder to survive. Nowadays no actor takes training like that (except a few such as Jackie Chan), people are still watching shows. Traditional groups just wanted to raise the bar and keep the status of the masters. Traditional comedian groups have strict disciplines, I don’t think it made them extra funny. Doctors charge people price not for curing disease, but the effort of curing disease. Why do we pay doctors when they can’t cure us? Because we understand something is not doable. Fortune teller could have the same thing, but they discard it. Fortune telling is nothing but knowledge; you can let people see what you are doing, what kind of limit do you have. Traditional fortune tellers pretended to be psychics, so people treated them like psychics: there is only one standard, either you are accurate or not, if you are not correct about something, you will be a liar. It actually made fortune tellers harder to survive.