Courses and Tutorials

16 March 2017

I have been working on some courses and tutorials and will be offering them when they are ready. They will be in electronic written format.

Another topic covered by Valens in a way not surviving in any author is the calculation of the length of life. Valens quotes the oldest authors, namely Nechepso the king and Petosiris, who were ultimately using the Knowledge given by Hermes Trismegistus. It took me not months but several years to figure most of them out. I say “them” because Valens describes and exemplifies at least 8 techniques. I have been able to crack 6 of them and plan to master the other 2, but it will take me time first to understand the text, then to understand the mathematics behind it, and then test the techniques on many charts.

I am not yet sure whether I will indeed be offering a course on the length of life but, given that no one in the whole astrological community has offered any longevity courses, not even on the far easier Hyleg/Giver of Life/Alcocoden/Giver of Years/Anaereta/Killing planet technique, it is something which has crossed my mind.

Though that is most probably further in time, I have thought about offering a course on the Four Pillars of Destiny Branch/BaZi of Chinese Astrology. I also have not decided, provided I do it, whether to make it explicitly for practitioners of Western Astrology or for anyone, that is, for people who have no knowledge of any type of Astrology whatsoever.

While there are some courses on Four Pillars of Destiny, they are, unfortunately, very watered down. In fact, while I know of highly skilled and experienced BaZi practitioners who may be accepting students for one on one tutoring (provided one can afford it), I can’t recommend a single course on Chinese Astrology. This is because practitioners hoard their knowledge and do not want to give it away. I say this based on having perhaps all the published BaZi books, among other materials, in English in the world.

However, the nature of the Four Pillars of Destiny system is such that it makes it mandatory to get into the most difficult stuff, so that one can start to think and practise holistically, if the student is to have any chance whatsoever of comprehending this discipline.

In order to do that, one must, of course, study the classical works of Four Pillars of Destiny, or at least be familiar with what they teach. There is a 19th century BaZi practitioner and author named Tsui Lok Ng who interpreted some of the classics. The problem is they were written in such a riddling manner/ala Vettius Valens/Nechepso, and/or he himself explained them in such a way too, that many Four Pillars of Destiny practitioners in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia  and Singapore have given up trying to decipher the meaning. For those that are interested, the books can be found online, but they are in ancient Chinese, which is somewhat different than modern Chinese, and one has to have knowledge of BaZi in order to understand them.

While I have the knowledge, unfortunately, I don’t speak Chinese. Thus if any Four Pillars of Destiny practitioner is willing to translate and explain these books, in return I can offer my knowledge and tutoring on Ancient Western Astrology (or some different type of knowledge).

At least I am fortunate that there is invaluable book on Four Pillars of Destiny in my native Bulgarian language. It is written by Chinese Metaphysics practitioner Ani Pesheva, who lived in China for 7 years and knows Chinese. Her book is based on quotes from the classics and is the only one not written in Chinese to include such priceless information. The thing is though that the book is almost entirely about the stars in BaZi and as such it does not focus on the most difficult and tricky topics.

One may wonder whether one can make it without these books offering interpretations on the classics or other similar ones. One certainly can. The problem is to what extent because one won’t know what they are missing. Say a practitioner believes they have 75-85% of the knowledge. So one assumes they will be missing the tricky bits, like some rare exceptions, special chart configurations, secret doctrines, etc. The thing is that, unless one reads all the material, so that they can figure out how much knowledge they are missing, they won’t know the percentages they have, but will instead be making assumptions.

This is the biggest problem with Four Pillars of Destiny. While, given the amount of translated books we have today, I can somewhat confidently say (somewhat because many more books and manuscripts are lying in libraries around the world) what percentage of Ancient (Western) Astrology is available, given the two thousand year history and overlapping of techniques among the different authors, the fact that I can’t do that with Chinese Astrology is making me uneasy. Another factor is that while I have devoted a few years studying the Four Pillars of Destiny system and practising it on hundreds of charts, I have not spent the same time learning and mastering BaZi compared to Ancient Astrology.

Lastly, but most importantly, because of my character and conscience, I cannot offer a course that is not detailed and comprehensive. It would not only be irresponsible but it, especially in BaZi, it could be even dangerous given the complexity of the system and the scarcity of used data at the same time.

After all, I have mentioned a few times that what I do is a very rare type of work and research and certainly not for beginners. If one wants beginners’ material they can always  buy books, go to conferences, or look up the well-known practitioners or those with the largest number of students.

Note: some parts of this page will updated, like announcements or other important events which happened after its writing.