With Lunar New Year quickly approaching, the Hsingtien Temple (行天宮) in downtown Taipei is filling with people seeking the advice of fortune-tellers on subjects ranging from marriage to business.
The area around the temple is filled with booths and shops purporting to delve into the future. Some fortune-tellers specialize in palm reading (看手相) or face reading (看面相), while others use a bird (靈鳥卜卦) to divine a customer's fate.
In the upscale shopping district in east Taipei, fortune tellers of a different kind are plying their trade.
An application of science?
Tsai Shang-chi (蔡上機) sits behind a large wooden desk on top of which are delicate teacups, a computer monitor with stocks prices on the screen and a catalogue bound in leather for Mercedes Benz automobiles. This is the Chinese astrologer's second interview of the afternoon and it seems he's just warming up his banter.
According to Tsai, the month before Chinese New Year is his busiest time of the year.
"People want to know predictions for the New Year and tips that can help them get lucky. Sometimes, I do live interviews for news programs to share my opinion … I have given more than 10 lectures in the past two months," he said.
Born into a family of fortune-tellers, Tsai became interested in both numerology and feng shui when he was a boy. Leaving home at age 14 he moved to Taipei to study the art of divining with numbers with various masters before setting out on his own two years later. "Being a young fortune-teller, it was difficult to attract customers," he said.
To prove his mettle as a number cruncher, he did a considerable amount of research into the art of numerology, the fruits of which were published in his first book about Chinese astrology called Ziweidoushu (紫微斗數). Since then, he has published over 36 books covering topics such as Chinese astrology, feng shui and face reading. He has even published books about cosmetics and fate as well as crystals and fortune-telling. The number of books he has written and their popularity attest to why he has a catalogue for luxury cars on his desk. And though Tsai has branched out from where he began as a fortune-teller, his main interest still revolves around Chinese astrology.
Chinese astrology — or numerology (命理), sometimes translated as the "principle of fate" — purports to divine a person's fate using numbers as symbols. One of the more common methods of determining a person's fate is to apply numeric values to the day, month, year and hour of when they were born. These numbers are then used to determine a person's fortune.
Tsai uses the lunar calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar used in Western divination, to interpret a person's fate. But that's not all. In addition to calendrical calculations, a whole esoteric system of branches and stems are used by fortune-tellers to understand their customer's future, the calculations of which are then used to offer suggestions for future actions.
Tsai says it is important to differentiate between Chinese astrology and feng shui. While Chinese astrology falls within the purview of numerology, feng shui, also called geomancy, is about the arrangement of objects.
Many are critical of astrology in any form, whether Occidental or Oriental. Tsai scoffs at this cynicism. He concedes that though there are many quacks plying the same trade, he is quick to add, "those who criticize numerology are often the same people who don't know anything about it."
RSS