Today I was talking to my friend who likes to eat dogs because they are so delicious. I apologized again for being kind of rude about my expression of disagreement about the culinary enjoyment of canines. I can imagine how jews and muslims feel about us eating their pet pigs. Oh wait... Never mind!
Anyway, we got over it. We started talking about astronomy, because he is a physicist. He has some interesting theories, among them that our planet is a cell that is a part of a much larger creature. Unfortunately, my chinese is bad and his english isn't too great.
We then started to talk about the I Ching, which he is very keen on. I actually used to study the I Ching daily for several years in my twenties. I mentioned that, but omitted the avant guard bohemian milieu of my life during that time frame.
We agreed that the I Ching is a very interesting topic. He sat me down and wrote out the 12 zodiac animals and explained how Chinese astrology works.
As many westerners know, each year in the Chinese calendar has a corresponding zodiacal symbol. This is why people refer to a Chinese year as "the year of the Snake" the year of the Rat or the "year of the Dragon" etc. These are known as the earthly branches.
In addition, there are additional characters that are assigned to each year. These are known as the heavenly stems. These are wood, earth, fire, metal and water.
It takes 60 years for each cycle to complete.Chinese will often refer to years not by their date in the gregorian calander, but to the heavenly stem and earthly branch for that year.
What is interesting is that when you add to the sixty year cycle the four parts of the yin/yang symbol, you have 64 possible combinations. This corresponds exactly to the possible combinations of the I Ching.
The heavenly stems correspond to the five known planets.
Anyway, we got over it. We started talking about astronomy, because he is a physicist. He has some interesting theories, among them that our planet is a cell that is a part of a much larger creature. Unfortunately, my chinese is bad and his english isn't too great.
We then started to talk about the I Ching, which he is very keen on. I actually used to study the I Ching daily for several years in my twenties. I mentioned that, but omitted the avant guard bohemian milieu of my life during that time frame.
We agreed that the I Ching is a very interesting topic. He sat me down and wrote out the 12 zodiac animals and explained how Chinese astrology works.
As many westerners know, each year in the Chinese calendar has a corresponding zodiacal symbol. This is why people refer to a Chinese year as "the year of the Snake" the year of the Rat or the "year of the Dragon" etc. These are known as the earthly branches.
In addition, there are additional characters that are assigned to each year. These are known as the heavenly stems. These are wood, earth, fire, metal and water.
It takes 60 years for each cycle to complete.Chinese will often refer to years not by their date in the gregorian calander, but to the heavenly stem and earthly branch for that year.
What is interesting is that when you add to the sixty year cycle the four parts of the yin/yang symbol, you have 64 possible combinations. This corresponds exactly to the possible combinations of the I Ching.
The heavenly stems correspond to the five known planets.
In addition, people are assigned a zodiac symbol for the month, day and hour of a person's birth.
Anyway, we then started to talk about some trouble he has been having in his village. He is from a small farming town where over the past 5 years ten people have died. Most recently a young girl was run over by a motor scooter. All ten people lived directly next to each other.
He showed me on google maps, and we are literally talking about 10 people dying in a very small area. There are maybe 8 buildings in this small area of maybe 200 square yards. Some of them got sick, others had accidents. He mentioned that everyone has had pretty bad luck over the past 5 years; his father was actually lucky because his truck was crushed when a neighbor crashed into it (unlucky for the neighbor who died), business troubles, etc.
The people believe that there is something in a dense patch of Bamboo that is causing them harm. He mentioned that someone said that they saw someone out of the corner of their eye, but when they looked, the person had disappeared.
The village burial plot is maybe 500 yards away in the middle of terraced fields.
I will update you, my gentle readers when I get further details of this harrowing paranormal drama unfolding.
crazers!
ReplyDeleteHappy Easter mi hermano
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