Riding the Dragon: 2012 predictions from Chinese masters

By Joyce Woo | AFP – 11 hrs ago

Want to know what's in store for 2012? Who will win the US election? Will the eurozone implode? China's feng shui masters tackle the big issues with their predictions for the Year of the Dragon.

As Chinese communities around the world prepare to ring in the new year on Monday, astrologers and geomancers are predicting the dragon will bring natural disasters and financial volatility, especially to crisis-hit Europe. "The world economy will be unstable in the Year of the Dragon, because the economies in Europe and the US are still suffering from the effects of the recession," Hong Kong feng shui master Anthony Cheng says.

Celebrity astrologer Peter So says the United States will provide some good news late in the year, but his charts for Europe make grim reading. "Europe will not recover so soon -- it is expected to suffer at least until 2014. But what I can say is this, a recovery for the US economy is possible in 2013," he says.

If you're prepared to ride the dragon and invest in 2012, Russia and China could be your best bets. The two emerging markets will be the best performers in a volatile year, says Cheng.

But be prepared for surprises, especially out of China where the Communist Party will hold its 18th Congress to select a new generation of leaders. "In the second half of the year, a scandalous corruption case will be exposed in China," warns Cheng, refusing to elaborate about who will be implicated. "I can also predict that in Hong Kong and in mainland China, a number of high-ranking officials will be forced to step down. Some may be thrown behind bars, or even pass away."

Many Chinese take such predictions seriously and adjust their lives accordingly. Feng shui, the ancient study of the forces of chi, or life energy, is a daily part of life in the Chinese world.

One of Hong Kong's largest brokerages, CLSA, releases a Feng Shui Index every year, offering its "tongue-in-cheek" predictions for global markets and world affairs.

Lest anyone takes it seriously, CLSA admits that feng shui's "original purpose was to locate auspicious burial spots, not call the twists and turns of the equity markets or individual sectors".

But it has a stab anyway, even if some of its predictions are less than audacious. For example, it says the stars point to a "job opening" for Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the man everyone expects to become China's next ruler after the 18th Congress in October or November.

As for US politics, the soothsayers are more cautious. When asked who will win the US elections, So refuses to make a prediction without precise information about the dates and times of the candidates' births. "Sometimes luck depends on the country itself, rather than an individual president," he says enigmatically. "For the US, they are starting to have luck on their side again, so it is going to be a good year no matter who's elected."

The five Chinese elements are wood, fire, earth, metal and water, and 2012 is tipped to be big on water. This could mean riches and abundance, but it could also spell disaster.

Well-known Hong Kong astrologer Alion Yeo says we should brace for storms and floods. "Expect to see a lot of flooding in areas like Thailand and South East China," he says.

So sees similar portents, but with an earthy twist. "Indonesia, Pakistan, India and places in China like Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou are particularly disaster-prone. They are likely to experience frequent earthquakes," he says.

While the ancient Chinese were developing their systems of astrology and geomancy, people across the Pacific were finding other ways to predict the future. The Mayans of modern-day South America purportedly had a calendar that showed the world would come to an end on December 21, 2012.

Like the historians who rubbish such interpretations of Mayan belief, So says there is no need to fear the end is nigh. "Doomsday is just a bunch of make-believe," he says.

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Well-known Hong Kong astrologer Alion Yeo says we should brace for storms and floods. "Expect to see a lot of flooding in areas like Thailand and South East China," he says.

So sees similar portents, but with an earthy twist. "Indonesia, Pakistan, India and places in China like Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou are particularly disaster-prone. They are likely to experience frequent earthquakes," he says.

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Read on Space.com that there will be some extreme solar flare activity over the summer and planetary alignments... so they are also predicting extreme weather events.

comments

I predict that ther are going to be more doomsday predictions about doomsday predictions.

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I predict there will be upheaval in the world, economic chaos, an important election, and light scattered showers!

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The art of a good prediction = just general enough to be seen as accurate in retrospect.

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Economic instability and natural disasters? Wow they really went out on a limb there! After one of these guys win the lottery, maybe I'll start paying attention to their predictions.

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The rich will get richer, wall street will continue to rob us blind, the news will say everything is getting better.

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Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered
By MALCOLM RITTER | Associated Press – Thu, May 10, 2012.

NEW YORK (AP) — Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago.

The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later.

Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on."

Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said.

One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times.

Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said.

On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said.

Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested.

Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said.

The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery."

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Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

http://news.yahoo.com/ancient-mayan-...191950240.html