Avoiding Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: How Bazi Teases Destiny & Fate
Learn how to handle negative Bazi readings and conquer your destiny through my guidance into the grey areas of predictive accuracy.
In my study of Bazi and life, I've often encountered this question - how "true" are my Bazi predictions? Since my 20s, I've engaged over 4 Masters for 1-on-1 consultations, and read hundreds of articles and videos from different sources. It can become a rabbit hole, but the pragmatic side of me always wanted to leave the theory and condense it into something practical that can be used timelessly.
When studying Bazi the line between a correlation and causation inevitably comes into play. When will I get married? Should I enter this career? If a Master's prediction becomes correct, then it feels as though all their other predictions would be correct. This is the challenge with identifying Bazi experts, and whether the reflexivity theory by George Soros comes into play, where negative Bazi predictions can potentially lead to self-fulfilling prophecies if individuals alter their behavior based on these predictions.
If a prediction came true, the Master gets credit. If it doesn't, there's is usually "extra reasons" or interpretations that the Master could use to explain away the responsibility. While there are technical reasons for this, it's very impractical for the layman to see the real power of Bazi, and convenient for Masters to peddle this.
What makes it worse that to attract clients commercially, it is tempting for Masters to fearmonger and hype things up to get attention, and tamper on the emotions of the masses while playing in the grey area of Bazi interpretation. Around 40% of people have sought advice or predictions about their future from a psychic, astrologer, or similar professional.
After many years of different readings Masters have done for me, it has become clearer that not every Bazi prediction is correct. Heck, sometimes 2 Masters can be completely opposite. I've had Masters made claims that are completely wrong (and they charge hundreds for a question) and saw that similar to the field of consulting, if the person isn't being compensated based on the quality of their results, there will be such issues. Across the board, I find each Master only about 60-70% accurate.
Of course, this depends on the type of questions I ask, the skill of each Master, and how I could determine if the predictions were true or not, among many factors. But in a broader sense, Bazi predictions are not absolute but are believed to provide a guideline or roadmap of potential outcomes in a person's life.
Difference Between Fate and Destiny
Fate is what happens when we fail to follow our hearts. Destiny is what happens when we commit to rising to our highest potential.
- Panache Desai
At a broader level, understanding the difference between destiny and fate is crucial. The fundamental difference between destiny and fate lies in the concepts of control and flexibility.
Fate is usually understood as a predetermined course of events beyond human control. It is often associated with inevitability and predestination, suggesting that no matter what actions one takes, the outcome will remain the same. This concept can sometimes lead to a sense of helplessness or resignation, as it implies that individual efforts cannot alter the course of events.
Destiny is often perceived as a path that one is meant to follow, but it is not set in stone. It is a journey that can be influenced by one's decisions, actions, and attitudes, suggesting a level of personal control and responsibility. Destiny can be seen as a potential or a purpose that one can strive towards, making it a more empowering concept. It is seen as the result of choices and actions taken throughout life, which can alter or influence destiny.
Bazi is simply a reading of fate alone and not destiny. However, there is a direct influence of fate onto destiny. I visualise fate like the the minimum and maximum trajectory of one's life, like the fluctuation of a stock in the investment market. Based on the innate value of the company there is a maximum range it can hit, but even within that range, the potential between a failing stock and a 10X return has to be actualised within its destiny.
The key part most people miss out on is the conscious will of the person in letting the fate completely chart their destiny. We have a choice to change and not be subject to the whims of our fate. It won't be easy, but it is not impossible. While old habits can die hard, childhood traumas can still affect adults, it doesn't mean these problems cannot be solved.
Studies have shown that belief in fate or destiny can influence decision-making and risk-taking behaviors. There are plenty of people who have recovered from some sort of trauma and addiction, the lesson here is to not let the past keep dictating your future.
I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.
- Paulo Coelho
The Curse of Knowledge In Bazi Predictions
A common theme I've found is that the less a person studies Bazi (or any other astrology), the more likely predictions of their chart tend to come true.
The Bazi chart is set from birth, which means if you are 35 years old, it is 35 years old outdated. While it can measure the constellation patterns your whole life, what it can't measure is the experiences and environment in the decisions you or your family along the 35 years.
Our thoughts, actions and behaviours have an accumulative effect, and each of them can affect us irrespective of what our Bazi chart originally predicts.
I know a friend who asked for a relationship prediction. I gave the reading and said that he has the chart that tends to like ladies which could also be good platonic friends, or people in similar social circles. However I also knew that at that time of asking, he was in a long-distance relationship with a Thai lady which did not match my prediction.
Upon probing on how he ended up in an LDR, he said that it used to date a lady who was in the same sport as him during his teens, but after that breakup, the pain taught him that he didn't have to date someone in the same social circle. It then dawned on me that my reading used to be true, up till the time when the chart's innate energy led him to his dating experience that broke up.
This changed his default perspective on dating and opened him up to choices that his chart would not naturally make. In other words, if I did the Bazi reading for him during his teens, my reading would have been spot on. Time was the factor here that changed how the reading was interpretated.
In this sense, the Bazi reading could show his subconscious preferences, but this can be overridden by conscious decisions, life experiences and environmental factors.
The less a person studies Bazi, the less they are predisposed to self-fulfilling prophecies, which allows them to "naturally" follow their chart patterns. However once there is knowledge, whether by doing a Bazi consultation, or having life experiences like a breakup, there is a choice for the person to make of whether to change their decisions. Many psychologists warn against relying too heavily on predictions, as they can limit personal growth and self-discovery.
This is why the longer the prediction timespan, the less likely the prediction is in coming true. This matches the wisdom in mathematical statistics. The person has a longer runway to make changes to their life's trajectory, while their original chart remains outdated.
This makes it very challenging to truly identify the fine lines between whether a Bazi reading was "correct". People who study Bazi have the greatest potential in identifying areas for change, but paradoxially are also weighted down by their pre-conceived notions of their subconscious wiring. Around 35% of people who received negative Bazi predictions reported increased anxiety or stress.
This is why we have the spectrum of people who use Bazi with a victim mentality, vs people who use it as an empowering one. Nearly 30% of people who received a Bazi reading changed a major life decision based on the prediction.
Placebo in Bazi Readings Cause Grey Areas
The placebo effect is a fascinating phenomenon that demonstrates the power of the mind over the body. It refers to the improvement in a person's condition due to their belief in the effectiveness of a treatment, even if the treatment itself has no therapeutic value. This psychological factor can have a significant impact on outcomes, often leading to positive results.
For example, in the realm of personal development and self-improvement, the belief in one's ability to achieve a goal (akin to a placebo) can significantly enhance one's motivation, effort, and ultimately, performance. This 'self-fulfilling prophecy' can lead to positive outcomes, such as the attainment of personal goals or improvement in skills. Positive predictions can boost a person's confidence and motivation, potentially leading to better outcomes.
Similarly, in the context of Bazi predictions, if an individual firmly believes in the accuracy of a prediction, they may unconsciously align their actions and decisions to fulfil that prediction. This can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the prediction comes true simply because the individual believed it would and acted accordingly.
George Soros' theory of reflexivity can also be applied to the interpretation of Bazi predictions. According to Soros, our perceptions of the world can influence the events that occur, creating a feedback loop between perception and reality. In the context of Bazi predictions, if an individual believes in a certain prediction, they may act in ways that make the prediction more likely to come true. This can create a reflexive relationship between the prediction and the individual's actions.
Bazi's Building Blocks - The 5 Elements
“There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.
There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination
they produce more hues than can ever been seen.
There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of
them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted.”- Sun Tzu
Like how Chemistry has a periodic table, Bazi has 5 fundamental elements - Metal Wood Water Fire and Earth. Similar to chemistry, every substance in the world is made up of some composition of elements. The challenge lies in understanding the difference between essence and form. For example, in nature a tree is traditionally used to represent the wood element. However, it is also inanimate, which is linked to the property of earth. It has to contain water to survive.
The essence of a tree is wood, but when it manifests in 3D, it can't just be completely wood, it appears in the form of a mixture of elements. This analogy applies to all the other objects in our world. They all contain some composition of the 5 elements in a certain percentage.
Hence, each element on its own, could represent millions of objects or things. This is an exercise in lateral thinking as each element is a category of objects in the world.
The Earth element in Bazi signifies stability, reliability, and practicality. It is linked to traits like patience, honesty, and thoughtfulness. In terms of physical attributes, Earth is associated with the spleen, stomach, and mouth. It corresponds to the center direction, the color yellow, and the late summer season.
For example in a career reading, these are the traditionally industries considered for the "Earth" industry - insurance, real estate, farming, mining, recycling, construction. Yet if the conversation shifted to gemstones, the same "Earth" elements could represent stones like bloodstone, yellow amber, pyrite, agate among many. All of these objects are sorted under the "Earth" bucket.
For different topics, there are different objects sorted into the 5 elements, so you can imagine how this can easily add up to millions of items in the "Earth" bucket alone.
As a counter example, the Metal element in Bazi represents structure, discipline, and determination. It is associated with traits like courage, righteousness, and persistence. Physically, Metal is linked to the lungs, large intestine, and nose. It corresponds to the west direction, the colour white, and the autumn season.
Lateral Thinking: A Bazi Master’s Challenge
It's important to note that these associations are not random, but are deeply rooted in the observation of nature and life by ancient Chinese sages. They observed how these elements interacted in the natural world and applied these principles to human behaviour and destiny. This is why in Bazi, one element can represent a multitude of things, functioning as a categorical system.
A unique aspect about Bazi is the considerable amount of lateral thinking involved in its interpretation process. A mere look at the surface level of an element can present a major limitation to attaining accurate predictions. Why? Because each element within the Bazi system symbolises a varied list of life aspects.
It's like putting together a puzzle where each piece carries differing weights of relevance depending on the overall picture. Even though an asker is only asking for 1 piece of the puzzle, the Master sees the entire picture and weaves a theme that answers the question, while showing the broader strokes the paint the full picture.
This calls for a broader, more holistic approach—a kind of thinking that steps out of the box, links seemingly disparate information, and surfaces the interdependencies between various elements in a Bazi chart. As such, it is crucial to scrutinise and weigh every facet of the elements present in the chart, carefully relating them to one another to make sense of the intricate system.
In typical readings, the Master would ask for some questions on the asker's background and current situation to re-orient their reading closer to the person's situation. If the asker was asking about career, the Master would align their mindset around the topic of Earth industries.
If the asker was asking which gemstone to buy to boost Earth element, the Master would search the Earth bucket to identify the associated stones. Without this dialogue, the predictions are very abstract and impractical, as there are millions of possible permutations of things we can talk about.
Accuracy Check: Evaluating the Precision of Bazi Predictions
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
For these reasons, I find Bazi consultations not useful if you don't go in with the mindset to receive constructive criticism. At least trying to put down your ego to be open enough to hear why this Master would say this about your chart. Granted, there are Masters who are very negative, pessimistic and old-school (these are usually the ones that say biting predictions) but that is more of a matter of choosing the right Master whose advice you can swallow.
If you just want to know for the sake of satisfying your curiousity, without the intention to take action in case it does not match up to your expectations, then don't do it.
From the Master's perspective, I don't think the aim is actually to try to be "as accurate" as possible, for the reasons mentioned above. Bazi just deals with 天 in the holy trinity of 天地人 and to purely cut of the other 2/3 of a person just from a Bazi chart is superficial, and neglects their environmental factors or personal will. I'm not saying make false predictions anyhow, but rather to read it with the expectation that the person might at worse take your word as gospel and ignore any self-efforts, and at best use your feedback as fuel for improvement in their circumstances.
The patterns identified in a Bazi chart can be correct, but it doesn't mean the asker can recognise it. if they lack self-awareness, or have a very different value system, then the interpretation of the Bazi predictions becomes hard to a be aligned.
In my own readings, the energy pattern tends to be right, although how it manifests tends to differ from person to person. For one person the energy pattern might be apparent in a dating arena, while for others it could be visible in their career.
Hence, I tend to take a more empowering approach to my readings and not call my predictions as definite. I always leave room for potential changes. While it might not sound professional to some, but I believe this is the best way to utilise Bazi, and any astrological modality for that matter. It is not meant to be definite in the first place. If this was so, our forefathers won't have spent so much effort to build this system thousands of years ago, and for us to have free will to decide what to make of our lives.
Don't Take Bazi Masters Seriously
In my career in AI, the value of a prediction always lies in correlation, not causality. Causality needs much more rigorous conditions to be valid.
Correlation refers to a relationship or connection between two or more things, while causation implies that one event is the result of the occurrence of the other event. In the context of Bazi, correlation would mean that certain elements or signs in a person's Bazi chart are associated with specific traits or outcomes, but not necessarily causing them.
Causation in Bazi would suggest that certain elements or signs in a person's Bazi chart directly cause specific outcomes or behaviors. For example, if a person's Bazi chart shows a strong presence of the water element, and they exhibit emotional sensitivity and intuition, this could be seen as a correlation. However, if it's believed that the water element in their chart is the direct cause of these traits, this would be causation.
However when most layman, even practitioners talk about Bazi, they usually talk about it from the assumption of cause and effect (your chart is X, hence you are Y), instead of correlation (people with your chart tend to be like X, hence will do Y).
I think when we re-communicate Bazi terminology in our readings, people will be more open to learning about it and not be scared to have additional weight of negative predictions in their mind, said in an emotionally charged tone by Masters who might be blindly regurgitating from the ancient books.
In summary, there is a lot of grey areas when it comes for evaluating accuracy, hence I don't think it's the rest ROI to spend on determine how true they are, but rather use them as points of reflection.
Reigning in Fear: How to Deal with Negative Bazi Predictions
It's crucial not to become too caught up in negative predictions or allow them to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Instead, Bazi should be used as a tool for self-understanding and growth. Approximately 25% of people report that a negative prediction about their future has led to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It can highlight potential challenges and strengths, but ultimately, how one navigates their life is up to them.
I think of it like playing cards. In Big 2, your strategy is affected by the cards you are dealt, which you have no control over, similar to your Bazi chart. However, how you play it can drastically affect your outcomes. This is the nature-nurture duality, and for most people I find it more useful to tell them to focus on the nurture part of their story as most people are nowhere close to making the most of their cards.
Some people can spent their whole life being stuck in the past, stuck in their beginnings and background, but I believe that there are enough cases of people who overcame their own odds and achieved noteworthy success in their own lives. They might not have started with the best cards, but they did very well with the cards they were given.
Hence the way I recommend dealing with negative Bazi predictions is similar to how you would receive constructive feedback from a boss at work. Reflect and review upon it, and take action if indeed there is something valuable in the feedback. But do not let it get attached to your identity.
Feedback is useful is most cases, but there is a limit to how much it can take you. If you solely focused on external feedback, you would miss out on your internal voice of wisdom, your internal feedback. The risk here is you become completely reliant on others for validation, who might not always have your best interests, even if they think they do. I would recommend striving for balance here.
Same with Bazi predictions, it's good to hear a healthy amount of it, but I don't recommend getting obsessed with every technicality, and move on with your own life outside of astrology. There are other modalities for self-discovery like MBTI, Big 5, Wealth Dynamics, Western or Vedic Astrology, or even Therapy and Coaching to help, so I don't think Bazi is the one-all-be-all kind of tool.
That being said, I use it a lot when understanding my mental model of the world as I've found the information timeless and applicable across so many situations.
Conquering Destiny: The Role of Free Will in Bazi Predictions
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.
- William Shakespeare
At this point, you might wonder, with Bazi offering such detailed predictions concerning our character traits, opportunities, and challenges, where is the room for free will? Well, here lies the true power of Bazi—it is not a crystal ball predicting a predetermined outcome, but rather a roadmap guiding you towards your potential. Experts advise using Bazi as a tool for self-awareness and improvement, rather than a deterministic guide to life's outcomes.
Embraced correctly, Bazi transcends the realms of mere fortune-telling and elevates itself to a tool of self-discovery and empowerment. It reveals the intricacies of your character, inherent strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. It sheds light on the chapters of your life, helping you to navigate through the good times and the bad days skillfully.
Every obstacle, every seeming disadvantage highlighted in your Bazi chart symbolises an opportunity for growth, an invitation to conquer, to rise above and to evolve. Take these insights as navigational buoys on the wide ocean of life. They signal where the waters are treacherous, where the currents can carry you faster, where it's safe to float and soak up the sun, or where it might be time to steer the helm of your ship in a new direction.
So we should not see Bazi as a deterministic tool confining your capacities, instead, see it as a mirror that reflects your innate potential awaiting to be actualised. As it is said, prophecy does not take things out of the hands of men, but rather, puts it directly into them. Those who believe they can shape their own destiny are often more proactive and likely to engage in behaviors that promote health and well-being.
Use Bazi as your empowering tool, and let its accurate insights guide you to self-discovery, success, and happiness, rather than tethering your life to preconceived outcomes. Acknowledge the power of your own choices and actions over the strength of Bazi predictions, as your destiny is not carved in stone.
Your life is a canvas, and you possess the freedom and power to paint it with strokes of your dreams, your ambitions, and your character. Your Bazi gives you the colours, the shapes, the outlines, but the final work of art? It's all you. Even the sunniest forecasts in a Bazi chart can't yield fruits without your action and diligence! The fortune in your hands, make the best of it.
So plunge into your journey, embrace what Bazi has to offer, and paint your own masterpiece!