Many astrologers seem puzzled at seeing dissimilar fate progression in twins.
“How is it that one of twins is healthy, while the other is sick?”
“Or, one of twins is rich, while the other is poor?”
The list goes on, while a sense of disappointment can be heard.
The mantra seems to be “since same time of birth leads to an identical horoscope, this should also result in similar life progression”. That’s pretty remarkable, if not it’s ‘against life’.
By and large, the astrologer will take the birth chart, not just to determine character, but to read the future from the birth signs.
We are here proposing 2 considerations more with regard to birth and life progression – no matter twins -, one biological, the other as it has been actually indigenous to Oriental ‘astrology’ all along.
Either way, ‘read future’ is fine, while you will see that we are actually supposed to use dynamics in the birth chart to yet gather invaluable information on the past, while ‘past’ here means: before the time of birth.
In fact, the whole idea is, that our birth chart holds information to concern of the gestation period, not just that, it allows a glance 3 months prior to time of conception.
If you read on, you run the risk that what follows will change your practice for good.
There is no tree that would distribute her resources across two fruits evenly, in the same way as when she would bear just the single fruit.
If we would solely focus on the cartography of the horoscope, then this would altogether disregard the mother as a resource.
As a result we would overlook all biological-physiological considerations, environmental exposures, not to mention epigenetic[1] [2] (dis)parities.
What twins have in common, is moment of conception, while all the rest depends on what each embryo for himself manages to then draw from the source: this single tree who is the mother.
This leaves unimpeded – but is also not the point here – that we see twins to marry on the same date, fall pregnant at the same time, as well as we may see many other such stunning similarities to occur.
Only those to determinedly cling to the factor time, may be deluded to think that twins should lead a similar life. Everything is reduced to year, month, day and hour of the eventual birth, but this is only – and not different than – cartography.
Twins have in common that their embryos developed inside the same mother during the same period of time, with each one for himself to pull from the same source of blood and Qi, as such each one to “compete” for resources, if you will.
In fact, there is nothing in defense of either Western Astrology or Chinese Astrology, that should lead us to then expect for twins to be at all equally healthy, rich or poor.
That said, between the two astrological approaches, the latter has a rather pronounced consideration that, however, nobody seems to realize in the field of Chinese metaphysics.
Even the most eminent Chinese masters in Bazi have learned to take a birth chart exogenously, i.e. birth signs to come from external factors, such as planets. No wonder that the Wood element – and Star 3 in Nine Star Ki – would be taken to ‘planet Jupiter’, then other such emblems.
In particular with regard to Four Pillars of Destiny Bazi and Japanese Nine Star Ki Astrology, no-one in his right mind in Asia will refer to these as astrological, at all, as these systems for fate calculation are full intended members of Internal Chinese Medicine.
In Chinese Medicine we say “organs produce emotions” and “what lies innate, must externalize”.
These systems are endogenous, such that, the elements to appear in your Bazi birth chart and the Stars for year, month and day of birth in your 9 Ki birth map, are to more faithfully constitute organs and body functions.
As it is with everything else in Chinese metaphysics, it is ‘each man for himself’, so that every astrologer and in seeing the Wood element in a horoscope, has to decide for himself if then the brain goes like ‘ah, Jupiter’ or ‘ah, Liver’, then read the life accordingly.
If we want to break free from an all too emblematic life reading, we need to grab back finally on what the ancient scholars had in mind, when they devised Bazi and 9 Ki.
Image shows how we may let organs and body functions correlate with the earth orbit around the Sun and the 24-hour clock, while note that correlations in use for the different Oriental metaphysical systems may slightly vary.
The 9 months gestation period always sails on the wave of a 12 months Solar year, so that equally, the mother and her fruit(s) will have sailed on the earth orbit around the Sun.
Brought about by vast Solar forces and for each Solar month, a specific organ will be at its ’15 minutes of fame’.
This Solar energy will reach the mother, while then it will be processed by the embryo, internalized.
Once by knowing the moment of birth, we obtain the Eight Characters in Bazi, but from which we are to then deduce the Strength and Vibrancy of the organs, for the time spent in the uterus.
A meaningful personal destiny analysis can be achieved only, if Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches (Ganzhi), and the 9 Stars, once more taken for organ and meridian energy.
In mind gestation period and twins, how alienating to even assume that there would be such a thing as ‘equal’ or so much as an evened out distribution of resources, which should then lead to an evened out life progression, everything because of only the perceived ‘identical’ horoscope.
By the time they are born, twins couldn’t be farther apart perhaps, physiologically, until we recognize that the last thing to still influence their lives – if it means their life progression was expected to be ‘similar’ – was then their eventual ‘identical’ horoscope.
This actually, should be a done deal in all of the field of astrology.
Given that little or nothing at the time of conception is the ‘same’ or even similar, also that little or nothing during the pregnancy is ‘similar’, it is critical not to declare as if everything then suddenly came back to ‘identical’ once more, only now that the eventual ‘same’ time of birth became known to the astrologer.
At the same time, if you ask a pregnant woman “where is your baby”, she will point to her belly and say “well, right here”, and it’s true of course.
It’s also true that ‘her baby’ sails along on the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, while internalizing vast Solar energies.
Long before this will translate into an eventual birth chart – at the far end of pregnancy – this will culminate in a certain ‘physiology’, the strength and vibrancy of which will be readable from the horoscope.
In fact, to begin with, that’s the whole idea behind the Twelve Stages of Life.
If you are to determine the Life Stage of any element to appear in a Bazi birth chart, this is not so much as to deem someone’s Wealth element or Power element at whatever potential, so that he could either or not gather wealth or authority smoothly.
Critically, the Life Stage is to give you an idea as to by what Solar forces the belonging organ was ‘charged’ during the gestation period. What else?
We’ll be then able to go into much greater detail to concern of this once class door closes – as that’s mainly outside the scope of this article -, but it is clear that you’ll best study the chrono-acupuncture of it all to at least a certain extent, the more if you are a Bazi teacher, a professional consultant or even an acupuncturist[3], and as you deal with students or clients and people’s ‘destiny’ as a metaphysician.
What should astrology be other than physiology?
Personality and temperament may be symptomatic for a certain organ and meridian Qi, which means that we should factor in physiology, notably physiological condition – health – of the mother.
While we will evade to talk about DNA, genetic imprint, epigenetics, we may here just focus on the mother.
Just consider a tree as it produces just only one fruit, so that all of the tree’s effort may be invested to sustain that one fruit, so that it may reap all of the resources.
A tree may also grow several fruits more. Now, it is a misconception to think that this one source – this one tree – will be able to devote its energy impartially over all these fruits. All apples hanging from the same tree can’t be equally strong and tasty.
One of Nineteen Principles of One Infinite Universe has it that: ‘Nothing is identical’.
“Nothing is identical” tells us how one embryo may be relatively more Yang, the other embryo then relatively more Yin.
As such, to take ‘time’ as the gospel in astrology, may be a gross generalization. As an analogy, in medicine, we would zoom in on generic physiology and pathology first, while then we would keep to a patient centralized approach for whatever there is to follow.
Nineteen Principles of One Infinite Universe: ‘Yin and Yang attract; likes repel”.
Besides identical – indistinguishable – DNA, same genetic makeup, no twins share the same immune system, which will render each one different in their response to disease. By extension, this renders a different response to problems, resistance against destiny if you will.
There is the nine months between time of conception and time of birth and during this period of time, each one of twins will take his own physiological course (learn about epigenetic tag).
If we were to only involve gestation period, as such projected on a time line – and pull this into the dynamic world of ever changing attraction and repulsion between Yin and Yang forces – we may see a relative DVD emerge where one of embryos may be dynamically pulling in blood and Qi at slightly different magnitudes relative and proportionate to his basic Yin or Yang makeup.
You may then just imagine how the more Yang embryo may have been able to tap into the relatively Yin vitamins more, while the Yin embryo may be able to tap into the relatively Yang minerals more.
If this is stretching your brain cells a bit too dearly, it is because in itself schemes such as the one here are overly simplified for the purpose, and out of context as there would be much more to pregnancy, health and life than could be captured within just one article or along just one line of reasoning.
Yet, at least all of this may invite you to divert your thinking from the mere time factor of birth charts where it concerns how you assess personality and fate progression of twins.
An oversimplification of a ‘one embryo’ and a ‘twins’ situation would give this:
Therefore, regardless of ‘same’ horoscope – and we may extend this to ‘identical’ house charts as in Xuan Kong Flying Star Feng Shui -, what our astrological charts may not show is in what way our personal Qi (will) resonate(s) with the environmental Qi, at any given time.
Conclusion
It may be disconcerting and setting you on the wrong foot, but by far the gravest error at all committed by just everyone in astrology is, that the horoscope is used to see ‘future’, while we need a 180 degrees different approach, as the truth of the matter is, the horoscope is to shed a light on matters by retrospection.
Saying, only if once more we take the horoscope to give us ‘which organs will have passed through the gestation period to gain most Strength and Vibrancy’, will we be able to engage into meaningful life readings.
In other words, to see anyone’s Bazi birth chart or 9 Ki birth map, is to actually give an x-ray straight into person’s physiology. That is what ‘astrology’ is.
- Epigenetics greatly explained by Hank Green of sciShow. ↩
- Insights From Identical Twins. University of Utah, 2016. ↩
- Our Acupuncture students use our style of reading a Bazi birth chart to confirm their pulse diagnosis ↩