Hey everyone!
I’m sure many of you realize my blog posts have always been focused on the philosophical aspect of metaphysics and it’s something I’m passionate about. Reason being, if we don’t get the philosophy of metaphysics right, I don’t feel we can benefit from metaphysics at all and it’s the reason why this field is in the current bastardized state of points zodiac forecasts and using ornaments as life-changing fixes. This post will be more of a technical case study to showcase how and why metaphysics is still very much relevant at this day and age, but not forgetting the philosophical of course. For the new readers for my blog, do go through my older posts and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Before I proceed, I just wish to make it extremely clear here that metaphysics should not be seen as a shortcut to wealth and riches. One could argue that metaphysics is a good tool to aid in the pursuit of wealth and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it would be a grave mistake to think that it’s a guarantee and that no effort is required from the chart-holder. Metaphysics is a complement, but not a substitute. The path to becoming wealthy is complex and isn’t a straight line – I’m sure everyone would agree. It’s not just effort alone because the quality and nature of everyone’s effort is different – it involves so many other factors like your intelligence, character, your ability to connect with people and whatever field you specialize in. It’s the amalgamation of so many different things. Charging forward blindly is not the way, and a lot of my clients have mistaken that transcending your chart is simply just charging forward relentlessly with no fear – that is an unbalanced approach, and as with all unbalanced things, one’s bound to mess up.
I’ve met a lot of successful and wealthy people in my line of work and in my own personal life and these are the people who built their wealth from nothing. I’ve also met people who are at the other end of the spectrum. People with good BaZi charts and people with bad BaZi charts are very, very different kinds of people. The impression they leave and the emotion and inspiration they can evoke in a person are worlds apart.
Before I forget: No practitioner out there should ever, ever promise you that they can use metaphysics to make you rich, and neither should they be working together with companies which sell get-rich-quick schemes. To me, that’s crossing a huge ethical boundary. I’ve seen practitioners partner up with such companies and be at events pushing investing in crypto-currency, and I’m very curious how the portfolios of those people who invested in crypto-currency in 2017 are doing now. I’ve done close to 1,000 readings now, and I’ve noticed that only the people with the lower quality charts will buy the idea of a shortcut to riches – don’t be that person.
If you have not read my post the BaZi charts of wealthy people, be sure to read it after you finish this post. At the end of the day, people who are wealthy possess the qualities that make them wealthy – it boils down to the decisions they make, and the environment they chose to put themselves into. The easy way for me to deal with questions about what makes people wealthy would simply be to declare that “it’s their good karma”, which isn’t wrong per se, but what I’m trying to do here is to steer the conversation towards another direction and let people understand what is it about these people that bring them their success so that we can all learn from them. Let’s also not forget that, sometimes, the best thing is to accept our limitations before we make a mistake. I lost count of the number of clients I’ve had who plunged into business only to have their lives turned upside down. I’m sure everyone knows by now that I don’t believe metaphysics is predestination, but to change or transcend your chart is not something a ‘normal’ human being can do and not something a practitioner can teach as well, so keep it personal and work on it yourself. It takes an incredibly strong, calm and wise mind to transcend one’s chart.
Let’s move on to talk about the case study and bring in the charts:
A few quick comments on the chart:
- His BaZi chart is one of the more complex ones, because most beginners would have trouble identifying the structure of the chart. Some people may classify it as a Normal Chart (正格) where the general rule of thumb applies when it comes to BaZi analysis. There will also be another group arguing that this chart falls under a Fake Follower Chart (假从格)。
- The complexity of this chart comes from the fact that it can be both, but we need to assess the Elemental Phases (运) extremely carefully to figure out whether the interplay (clashes & combinations) of the elements is able to uphold the structure and balance of the chart.
- In other words, certain conditions will make this chart a Fake Follower Chart, and certain conditions will make this a Normal chart. It’s one of those charts where we cannot conclude what the beneficial elements are haphazardly and assume that it stays constant.
The recent developments in crypto-currency reminded me of this client of mine. I wish I kept the WhatsApp conversation with him for authenticity purposes but it was on my old phone, but just trust that all these case studies I post are real life cases which readers should take seriously. I just wish to make it clear (again) that I don’t generate fake content for content or marketing purposes.
This was a client from 2017. You can probably tell from the Year Pillar that he’s well into his retirement age and the Zi Wei Dou Shu chart attached states it rather obviously (I’m not masking the birthday because anyone can derive it just by looking at the pillars).
This case was particularly memorable, because I remember this client being extremely enthusiastic about investments and growing his wealth, albeit through a rather risky and controversial method. This client of mine invested heavily in Bitcoin – Bitcoin mining in particular – where he invested in Bitcoin mining machines. Bitcoin was all the hype and craze in 2017 and everybody wanted to jump on the boat. He put in a 6-figure sum into the investment and it has a lock-in period. I’m sure we would all agree that a 6-figure investment is no small sum – you could do a lot of things with this kind of money and have a really blissful retirement.
As with most of my other cases, this client had already invested this sum before he approached me for a reading. It’s a very common issue because it’s no easy feat to alter the course of what your chart states – it requires a lot of calm and planning at each and every stage of your life. Most people would go wherever the wind blows and sometimes, before they know it, disaster hits and it is only then do they come for a reading.
To get a return on his money, he’ll need the value of Bitcoin goes up. Now, we all know that Bitcoin is probably one of the worst investment decisions one can make this year (if you can even call it an “investment”), and the value of whatever he put in is like worth only a fraction of what it original was.
The all-time high price of Bitcoin was USD$19,500, but it sits at USD$4,245.68 now. Given the length of time it takes to mine a single Bitcoin and the costs associated with it, this client of mine will likely never see a positive return on his investment.
The question everyone’s is probably asking themselves is whether such wealth loss scenarios can be seen in someone’s chart? Of course it can, and its rather easy to identify to signs in this particular case study. The warning signs are salient because his natal chart is imbalanced leans towards two dominant elements which are Fire and Earth. The nature of such charts is that it’s naturally more volatile, so when things strike, the impact will be significant and it won’t be an event where you can just brush away and not feel the pinch. This is the reason why balanced charts are the regarded as the best kind of charts, because life will be relatively smooth through one’s life and less tumultuous.
On the technicals and how the signs were identified in his BaZi chart:
- The Yin Water (癸水) in his chart, despite being a beneficial element, is being absorbed away by Yang Earth (戊土) and is converted into Fire. Definitely not a good sign.
- 2018 is 戊戌 year, so the negative combination of 癸戊合 definitely forms again, and 2018 can be said to be the trigger year where the problems manifest.
It’s really as simple as that. 2018 was clearly a year of wealth loss, and the reason for this wealth loss was an action he took in 2017. This is precisely the reason why I wrote this blog post on how to read a BaZi chart the holistic way, and that you should see every year as interconnected. If you go to a practitioner who tells you something is going to happen in the current year, it may already be too late. Unfortunately, no one seems to appreciate this – not even most practitioners. Seeing every year (流年) and every 10-year phase (大運) as independent and separate is missing out on a lot of valuable information the chart is trying to tell someone.
Most people would wonder, can Zi Wei Dou Shu tell the same thing? Of course it can and it should. There is no way for these methods will contradict, because if it does, you’re basically saying that one of these legendary figures who developed these methods didn’t know what they were doing – which we all know isn’t true. Every method passed down can be used and is still applicable. Perhaps one interesting thing I could share is that I’ve had my chart read my by both Western astrologers and Vedic astrologers, all both these methods from different civilizations painted the same story as my BaZi and Zi Wei Dou Shu chart.
Here’s the Zi Wei Dou Shu chart configured for 2018:
I know everyone’s probably going “How the heck do I read this?” It’s normal. I’m not going to draw the Flying Star arrows on the chart for now as it’s going to get really messy.
To briefly sum up what’s going on:
- 循環忌 appears between the 流年财帛宫 (Annual Finance sector) and 大运财帛宫 (10-year Phase finance sector). This alone can makes it extremely obvious that 2018’s highlight is on money and finances, and will be the main source of the chart-holders frustrations this year.
- 大运财帛宫 being clashes by 大运化忌 (‘hua ji’)，and it’s also clashing with 大运化禄 (‘hua lu’)，which implies 吉里藏凶，meaning something which appears positive at first has underlying dangers and mishaps. This also means any financial action action taken doing this phase should be assessed extremely carefully. Note that this appears in his 10-year phase, so this is a period where financial pursuits may tend to turn sour, despite looking positive at first.
- 流年田宅宫‘s 化忌 clashes with 大运财帛宫。田宅宫 is also 财帛宫的福德宫，which basically means there is no way growing of your wealth or wealth acquisition will go smoothly. People tend to underestimate the importance of one’s 福德宫 not knowing that it plays a huge role in matters related to wealth.
- His 财帛宫 also has a feature we call 化禄逢自化禄, which means that the positive effect of 化禄 (which usually represents wealth, abundance to name a few) will be lost by the chart-holder’s own doing. Sometimes, doing nothing would have been much better choice, and this is one of those times.
This chart-holder will move out of his current 10-year Phase by next year, but the blow has already been dealt and the lesson learned. He probably won’t make the same financial mistakes in his next phase, just that the challenges will come in a different form and aspect of his life. Each new 10-year phase we go into brings about a different set of challenges, and a different area of your life will be highlighted.
The bottom line is, be it BaZi or Zi Wei Dou Shu, both methods will not contradict each other. You’ll definitely need an in-depth knowledge of both methods to be able to appreciate this.
My clients would know that I combine both methods during my consultations, and there are several reasons why I do this:
- BaZi can give you a very quick and accurate overview of the trajectory of the person’s life. An experienced practitioner can immediately assess the quality of the chart probably in less than 2 minutes and can identify whether someone is in a good 10-Year Phase or a negative one.
- One thing that BaZi lacks is that it cannot identify where and how some of these challenges we face come from, but Zi Wei Dou Shu can.
- Zi Wei Dou Chu can do a much better job at tying all the different aspects of life together, how it impacts each other, and finding out where the root cause of the problems come from.
- Perhaps what I regard as the most valuable trait of knowing two methods is the fact that it allows you to check your own analysis, ensuring the techniques and theory are applied correctly and do not contradict.
Zi Wei Dou Shu is clearly a more advanced method, and the appearance of the chart itself should make it fairly obvious. Combining both methods brings many practical benefits during a consultation. One’s BaZi chart tells me immediately if the chart-holder should be wary, and if negative signs are shown, I’ll immediately look at the ZWDS chart to see where it comes from and the severity of it.
One disconnect that clients and practitioners can encounter is that, if only BaZi was used, clients wouldn’t know what it can identify is actually very limited, and they’ll probably go “Is this all that BaZi can do? What a disappointment.” And if Zi Wei Dou Shu alone is used, the client will likely go “I have no idea what’s going on. Can I really trust the reading?” Clients are usually at the mercy of practitioners, because they either have to take whatever the practitioner has to say at face value, or they have to try to understand the technicals behind the analysis.
For anyone new to my blog, my consultations can usually get very technical, because it’s my way of assuring clients that the analysis was done properly and according to theory. You can see it as my way of managing clients. Personally, I’d want anyone I’m consulting in any field to earn my trust by trying to help me understand, as a layman, whatever it is they are doing – be it in law, medicine or design.
So yes, metaphysics is still definitely applicable till this day. Remember to approach it the right way, and if possible, don’t wait till the last minute right before disaster strikes to turn to it and expect the practitioner you turn things around for you. I’m not trying to scare anybody, but please remember everything is cause and effect and your charts is a simply a way to describe this law. You don’t want to be in a situation where a practitioner has to tell you “It’s too late”.
Now, I don’t want people to start asking me for advice on investment decisions. Just exercise prudence and seek the counsel of qualified professionals. Have very clear financial goals and have plan. You wouldn’t need metaphysics if you exercise sound judgement and more importantly, common sense.
I will write a post on choosing your career soon because I’ve realized there are some huge misconception around this, so do subscribe to my blog and watch out for it.
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Some personal updates:
In case you’re wondering why it’s been a while since I blogged, it’s because I just got married! My wife and I have not done the banquet yet, just that we registered our marriage. We’ve got the keys to our new house and we’re meeting designers to help us with the renovations, so that’s going to take up quite a bit of my attention and bandwidth. And yes, I applied feng shui to my own home of course. Perhaps applied isn’t the right word to use – I hunted for this house using feng shui. If you wish to find out more about what goes on behind the house hunting process, you can also read this blog post I wrote for 99.co, which I am the key opinion leader for.
It’s been a crazy busy year with one thing after another – but definitely very fulfilling.
– Sean
