Yays - my Authentic Chinese Horoscope ...

I had my "Authentic Chinese Horoscopes" book by Kwok Man-Ho for at least a good 6-7 years now, and it had been gathering dust on some bookshelve in a rarely visited corner of my study room. When I bought it some years back, it was because my old friend Hong Seong had been dispensing horoscopes to everyone I knew then, based on the reading of this book.

So I jeles ... I oso want to have the book and dispense horror-scopes ... but alas, everyone I know already got their horror-scope ... so I put the book in a rarely visited corner of my study room, hoping the cockroaches will eat the book away.

Lately, I have met some people who swear by their horoscopes. Maybe it's the New Year / Chinese New Year thing, maybe it's purely coincidental they have their readings accurately reflected, whatever ... but my curiosity was stirred.


The book itself is easy reading - nothing complicated. Starts off by explaining how Chinese Horoscope came about, and about the two levels of Chinese astrology - the one we're familiar with - the 12 Animal signs, and the one we're not so familiar with - the Tzu Wei (Purple Star) system.

I'll skip the part about the 12 Animal signs - that's pretty much all over the place - you'll find those everywhere. The interesting thing noted by the author

the animal sign is only a small part of astrology. At a simple level it can give a brief sketch of your basic personality according to Chinese beliefs.

I knew it ... I had been right all along ! For a more detailed, accurate and personalised reading, you need to use the Tzu Wei (Purple Star) - originally a complicated system only your local Chinese astrologer would know.

Based on the concept of ming (fate), you really have to draw up a chart representing all the location of the 12 different aspects (called palaces in this book) of your life, and then figuring out which of the 36 stars used in the calculation falls into which 12 areas in your life. Once that chart is figured out ... you then just look up the tables in the book and viola ... your authentic Chinese horror-scope is revealed !!

Let me take you through my own construction of the chart ...

Paper, Pencil, Ruler
Draw this on an A4 paper, of if you're like me, in your MS Word. This grid is the foundation of your chart. In the middle, you have space your solar and lunar date and time of birth, then your eight character, element and the date. You only need to fill up your solar date and time of birth (that means look at your MyKad la ..). If you don't have your time of birth, proceed to next point, please.


Dig up you Birth Cert
If you're like me, chances are you Sijil Beranak is *gasp* lost. You have your passport, your MyKad, your driver's license, your Student ID, but Sijil Beranak ?? That's like keeping your PMR cert after you have your PhD, right?

Well, no birth cert, no time of birth. No time of birth, no need to proceed la ... call your mum, you dad, someone ... and find out your time of birth.

You see, you need to get the Year, Month, Day and Time of your birth.

If you have that, you proceed to next point ... you calculate your Lunar date and time of birth. There's a table in this book that will help you convert.

And using that, you come up with the Si San Pat Tzi ... (Eight Characters), the key to your horror-scope. The year, month, day and time of birth will each convert into two chinese characters, which will give you your Eight Characters. And you also find your element via another table, also provided in this book.

Introducing the twelve earthly branches
OK. Next step is to fill up your chart with the 12 earthly branches. Don't care la what they are ... just have to put them in the right place on the chart. Just like this ...


Locate your palaces
Remember I mentioned the 12 aspects (palaces) of your life? You now have to calculate where each one is located based on your Eight Character. Like this ... Yup, now you have your palaces located. You can now do the next step ...

Find your stars and rate em
And now, you simply figure out thru a pretty complicated series of tables which of the 36 stars goes where, and what are their degree of influence. Apparently, just because you have a star in one place, doesn't mean it has to be influential. So, again, you look up complicated tables and see if each star needs to be given a rating ..


Get your ages right
This part I don't quite understand, but your supposed to put your get your age limits into the boxes as well. I intepret these age limits as saying that when you're in this age range, your prospects/fate/destiny will closely resemble whatever prospects/fate/destiny in that particular box.


And viola ...
You have chart !!!


Get the readings from the book
Once you have a completed chart, you will simply have to browse through the book and look up some tables to see what each star means to you. What you'll get is 36 stars that carry some reading of their own, followed by additional readings that will come from combination of stars. What it means really, in each area of your life, the presence of a star will have certain readings associated with it. However, sometimes, the combination of several stars can either alter, augment or diminish the readings.

My Verdict:
Good stuff. The readings I got were accurate, as far as the parts that I can verify anyways based on past and current events and situation. It accurately depicted my physical and emotional characteristics, my relationship with my sibling and parents, my co-workers and superiors and my wealth situation (at least up to now). As usual, there are the odd readings that are really open to intepretation, but that's probably good anyways - at least you have some surprises, right?

Doesn't change my believe that horror-scopes are merely generalization that might not apply to me, and that I make my own destiny :), but it was good to see the horror-scope accurate in more ways than I expected it to be.

It's a really cool, albeit a bit boring way to spend 3 hours away on a boring CNY holiday ... :) Haha ... I know the diagrams don't look that good ... I'm still having Photobucket problems ... will update them later when Photobucket starts to behave properly.

Want to know my readings? Maybe another day la ... but do yourself a favor, if you really feel like there's more to it than just the 12 Animal Signs or your Tarot Cards ... go on, buy the book. Or borrow from me la ... (but my copy quite run down).