【KO's Insights】
〈 Is Fate Determined? 〉
Recently, the movie Ne Zha 2 has become very popular, and in it, Ne Zha shouts, "My fate is determined by me, not by heaven." This phrase means that fate is in one's own hands, not controlled by destiny or external forces. It emphasizes individual initiative and control over one's destiny, showcasing a spirit of defiance against fate.
However, traditional fatalism holds that a person's fate is predetermined by external forces, such as gods, natural laws, or the order of the universe. In this view, one's choices and actions cannot alter the preordained outcome. In other words, no matter how hard a person tries, their future is already determined, and it cannot be escaped. As the saying goes, "Everything is fate, and nothing is up to humans."
Fatalism is often contrasted with free will. Free will suggests that a person’s choices can affect the future, while fatalism asserts that, even with choices, the final outcome is inevitable. While fatalism promotes the idea that "everything is fate, and nothing is up to humans," the phrase "My fate is determined by me, not by heaven" emphasizes free will, advocating for changing one's fate through personal effort and choices, rather than relying entirely on fate or destiny.
Looking at Fate from the Perspective of ZiweiDoushu
As a practitioner of ZiweiDoushu, I would like to explore whether fate is determined from this perspective.
The ZiweiDoushu life chart is divided into 12 houses, with each person's life palace falling into one of these houses. These include: the Life Palace, Parents Palace, Fortune Palace, Property Palace, Career Palace, Servants Palace, Travel Palace, Illness Palace, Wealth Palace, Children Palace, Marriage Palace, and Siblings Palace. These houses represent a person's basic personality traits and life opportunities.
In ZiweiDoushu, starting from a certain year between the ages of one and five (the specific year depends on the individual's five elements configuration), a person enters a ten-year fate period, beginning from their Life Palace. This ten-year fate period reveals the opportunities and challenges in each decade of life. After this ten-year fate period, the next ten-year fate period will move to the next palace in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction on the chart as the Life Palace (depending on whether the individual is male or female, and whether they are Yin or Yang), and so on. Each ten-year fate period is influenced by changes in the nature of certain stars and the appearance of new auspicious and inauspicious stars, forming a different fate blueprint.
At the same time, ZiweiDoushu can be detailed to yearly, monthly, daily, and even hourly life charts. These charts also change with the changes in the nature of certain stars and the appearance of new auspicious and inauspicious stars. Therefore, by analyzing the life chart, we can observe the trend of the person’s destiny development at a particular point in time.
Some might think that ZiweiDoushu is fatalistic, as the stars and planetary movements in the chart seem predetermined and unchangeable. However, I believe that ZiweiDoushu is not the same as fatalism.
As I mentioned earlier, everyone's life unfolds through consecutive ten-year fate periods, with the ZiweiDoushu chart encompassing 12 houses. The chart covers almost the entire life trajectory of a person until the age of around 120. For most people, whose lifespan is around seventy to eighty years, their destiny movements are covered in seven to eight houses as the Life Palace of the ten-year fate period. However, ZiweiDoushu does not stop displaying the trajectory of fate after these seven or eight houses. In other words, Zi Wei Dou Shu does not decide the ultimate outcome of a person's fate, it merely reveals the trajectory of one's life.
For example, if a person’s chart indicates that at a certain point, the Siblings Palace and Servants Palace show the possibility of financial losses, they might encounter friends or relatives asking to borrow money. These encounters are inevitable, and the person cannot avoid them, but whether to lend money and how much to lend are decisions that can still be made through personal choice. Even if fate makes something happen to you that is extremely unfavorable to you, in the vast majority of cases, as long as you have the proper preparation in advance, you can mitigate the adverse impact on you.
Although the trajectory of fate is fixed, there is still a vast amount of freedom for you to make decisions at every detail. Every decision you make can influence the future outcome of your fate. Therefore, even though you cannot change the direction of the trajectory, it is still possible for you to use free will to influence the results that the trajectory brings. This is the unique value of ZiweiDoushu: it can reveal your life path in advance, allowing you to make decisions that are more favourable to you.