chinese fortune telling

[jenuine]

I had my fortune told by a pretty famous person when I was much younger.
This is done by using my date and time of birth. Has anyone else had this experience?

My mom recorded it on a cassette, and it wasn't recently that I listened to it. There were some things that were pretty similar to my western astrology descriptions. Both of them were pretty accurate.

I wonder if Chinese fortune telling and western astrology are related?

One thing that sort of stood out to me was that I was told that I really start to shine after the age of ~30. I think the reason for that happening in my western astrology is that my Leo sun is traveling from the 12th house to the 1st house. I don't quite know how it was predicted through Chinese fortune telling though.

[yuting]

I would think both are study of patterns/statistics based on what were observed/observable with reference to something (a certain day, a certain sign, a certain time, a certain astrological layout).

There are different methods of Chinese fortune telling:
Ziwei - similar with western astrology in that it maps a person based on time and place of birth to an astrological pattern. For western, it is referenced to real stars, while Chinese is referenced to some hypothetical symbolic stars. They both use house analysis of 12 houses and there are angular houses/core houses etc. Western astro requires more accurate birthtime, while Chinese astro usually requires only up to within a 2hr timeframe

Bazi (or literally translated to eight-words) - They are arranged in groups of 2characters x 4 groups. First character is one of the 5 elements of metal, wood, water, fire, earth, each having a male version and a female version (ie 10 different characters to permutate from). The 2nd character is one of the 12 animals of the year permutating in fixed order (each animal will have one or more elements related to it). As such, there are 60 combinations for each 2-character group. The first group is the year, the 2nd the month, the third is the day and the 4th is the time (in 2hr slots). From the combination of these 4 groups and their relationship to the 2-char group representing each year/mth/day etc, we can interpret the natal pattern (the 8 characters) and the fortune (natal relationship with the year/mth/day)

i-ching - it is a classic in philisophy, but in the context of fortune telling, it is used mainly for horary readings

[dr. farr]

There is also an I Ching astrological method from old times as well (there are a couple of books detailing this rather complex methodology, available on several internet book sites such as Amazon.com-see "An Anthology of I Ching" and also "Astrology of I Ching", both books by Sherrill & Chu)

[yuting]

Originally Posted by dr. farr

There is also an I Ching astrological method from old times as well

I-Ching is actually a classic book on philosophy. However, the philosopher who wrote it was able to apply his philosophies to fortune telling. It is mostly used in horary reading (the I-Ching oracle with 64 basic combinations). However, it could also be used for natal reading + fortune telling (iron abacus reading)