We Were Born on the Same Day: The Difference Between Western and Ba Zi Astrology

By Au Yong Chee Tuck

There’s a popular contention that if everything is determined by fate, what’s the point of trying to succeed? After all, if it’s predestined a person will become famous, perhaps he might not need to exert much effort, and fame would appear in time. But fame isn’t always synonymous with wealth and success. Some famous celebrities still struggle with money issues. Possibly the best-known example is Michael Jackson.

In We Were Born on the Same Day, author Au Yong Chee Tuck examines the life of an actor who had an extremely strong fame star in his birth chart, yet his career stalled. Then there was the ex-Beatle whose fame brought him the unwanted attention of a potential assassin. Tuck asks the question: if fate determines the outcome of our lives, does that imply two people born on the same day share identical fates? He shows how posing this question to both a Western astrologer and a Ba Zi astrologer yields two different answers.

We Were Born on the Same Day investigates what it means to two people who might or might not have been born on the same day and why human decisions still play a role in their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Nov 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543748116

Au Yong Chee Tuck

Au Yong Chee Tuck is the author of several other books. He has three children.

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Au Yong Chee Tuck.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018959787

ISBN:                  Hardcover                   978-1-5437-4813-0

                            Softcover                    978-1-5437-4812-3

                            eBook                         978-1-5437-4811-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PART ONE: PREPARATION

Chapter One:      How Many Elements – Four Or Five?

Chapter Two:      The Three Cycles, The Combinations And The Clashes

Chapter Three:   What’s All This Stuff About Yin And Yang?

Chapter Four:     The Root Of The Matter – The Day Master

Chapter Five:      How Lucky Can You Get? The Luck Cycles

Chapter Six:        The Concept Of Time

Chapter Seven:   Missing In Action – The Missing Element

PART TWO: ENDEAVOUR

Theme I:              Were We Really Born On The Same Day?

Chapter One:      The Night That Changed My Life Forever - Billie Jean King

Chapter Two:      The Weeping Women – Dora Maar

Theme II:             Same Date Of Birth, Different Fates

Chapter Three:   The Singer, Not The Song – Mary Wilson And Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

PART THREE: VICTORY

Theme III:            Be Careful What You Wished For – Fame Or Fortune?

Chapter Four:     Romancing The Mosquito – Cliff Robertson Leads 633 Squadron

Chapter Five:      Why Didn’t The Noblemen Stars Help Him? - The Assassination Of John Lennon

Theme IV:            Let’s Talk About Money!

Chapter Six:        The Curious Case Of The Strong Wealth Star - Ursula Andress And Julie Andrews

Appendix I: Recommended Reading

Dedicated to my three children – none of whom were born on the same day

PROLOGUE

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.

Nicholas Murray Butler,

American educator,

Commencement address,

Columbia University.

I

The clueless consultant who counted sheep

Why would anybody want to hire a consultant? Perhaps the most obvious reply might be that the clients wanted to try and solve certain issues in their personal lives or to seek help to re-engineer their companies.

The field of management consultancy was a lucrative, multimillion industry – for the vendors, if not necessarily for their clients. It has become public knowledge for some time that in many cases, the situation for the clients became worse after they hired the consultants.

Some of these examples have been well documented in books such as Dangerous Company: The consulting powerhouses and the businesses they serve and ruin by James O’Shea and Charles Madigan (Crown Business, 1997).

That brought us to the next question. Would you trust a consultant? If we hired an astrologer, were we not seeking advice from a consultant? Why should anyone put their faith in the mumbo jumbo of astrology? Perhaps we might ask the million dollar question, if the astrologer was someone who knew it all and could see it all, why didn’t he try and solve the issues in his own life?

In any case, wasn’t astrology a high and dry subject, replete with its tiresome tables and seemingly repetitive boring charts?

Perhaps we should try to break the monotony and entertain ourselves with an anecdote about the sharp shepherd who bumped into an earnest but clueless consultant.

A shepherd was minding his flock – and his own business - in the pasture when suddenly a brand new SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle) drove up. The driver, a young Yuppie, immaculately dressed in a designer suit, shoes, sunglasses and tie to match, came out and told the shepherd, If I could tell you how many sheep there are in your herd, will you give me one?

The shepherd glanced at the Yuppie, his peacefully grazing flock and then replied nonchalantly, Sure. Why not?

The Yuppie took out his laptop and cell phone, surfed a NASA page on the Internet, called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, opened up a database and compiled exactly 7.6 pages of Excel spreadsheets replete with complex formulae. Finally, he printed out a 17 page report on his portable printer and solemnly declared, You have exactly 1,760 sheep.

The shepherd nodded, That is correct. As agreed, you may take one of the sheep.

As the Yuppie chose one animal and put it into his SUV, the shepherd interrupted him, If I can tell you what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?

It was the Yuppie’s turn to oblige, Well…Why not?

The shepherd calmly continued, without missing a beat, You are a consultant.

The Yuppie was flabbergasted. How did you know that?

The shepherd went on, Simple. You turned up here even though nobody called you. You wanted to be paid for the solution to a question whose answer I already knew. And you don’t even know anything about my business. You took my dog.

II

I never think about the future. It comes soon enough.

Albert Einstein,

American Jewish physicist,

Interview given on the Belgenland, 1930

The debate of fate versus free will has long been disputed by both the man in the street and by philosophers. If everything was predetermined, then what was the point of making an effort to work diligently towards our goals? After all, if it was fated that a person would become wealthy, then all he needed to do was to wait for destiny to drop the long awaited bag of gold onto his lap.

But that did not help to resolve the question of why two or more persons born on the same day did not share the same destinies. For instance, there was a Frenchman born on 26 October 1916 who eventually became President of France from 1981 to 1995. His name was Francois Mitterrand.

There must possibly have been many hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of babies born on the same date as Monsieur Mitterrand. Why was it that none of the others became Presidents of their respective countries?

The concept of Fate was one of the 102 Great Ideas in the list drawn up by the editors of The Great Books of the Western World (GBWW). In the context of the Great Ideas, any discussion of Fate would inevitably be linked to the concept of Will.

The Great Books program was conceived by Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler during the early 1950s. Both of them had considerable experience working as editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The first version of the Great Books which was essentially a discussion of the Great Ideas of Western thought were spread out through a set of 54 volumes. There was a revised second set issued in 1960 which expanded the number of volumes to 60.

One of the major themes prevalent in classical Greek drama was the theme of how Fate was so interwoven in the plots of the plays. Even the Olympian gods with all their prowess could not always defy Fate.

For instance, in Homer’s Iliad, some of the gods wanted to save Hector, the eldest son of King Priam of Troy. But Zeus saw that it was fated that Hector would die at the hands of the Greek warrior Achilles. So Zeus told the other gods that it would be futile for them to intervene.

But was Fate really incompatible with Will? Could these two seemingly disparate concepts not co-exist together?

A person might have been born on a specific date and time. In the study of Ba Zi astrology, the Qi or energies that were prevalent during the birth date and hour might set the probable parameters of that person’s achievements during his lifetime.

Yet within these parameters, there was plenty of room to manoeuvre. A person could choose what to do.

It was only logical to argue that in life, a person could make choices. If a human being could not make decisions and choices, then how was he different from the other animal life?

III

We know men’s faces, not their minds.

Chinese proverb

The Yin book of Ba Zi

When the initial sketches for this book were being drafted, there was nothing to indicate that it would evolve into a Yin book about Ba Zi astrology.

There was a total of twelve charts mentioned in this work. Only two of the twelve persons were males. And even then, both these males had Yin day masters. Since the majority of the persons discussed were females, it could be said that this work had inadvertently turned out to be overly Yin.

However, we have realised that many books on divination tended to focus mostly or even exclusively on the males. This facet was more pronounced with regard to those divination books written about people in the corporate sector. The impression given seemed to be that only the males could succeed in the rough and tumble world of entrepreneurship. There was little or no mention of any females in the corporate arena.

In that event, we hoped that we have strived to redress the imbalance somewhat. After all, in the study of Ba Zi astrology, we were supposed to interpret the female charts differently from the male charts. In a male chart, we focused on career and money. For the female charts, the emphasis should have been on husband and