A woman’s fate is actually unpredictable.

Hello everyone (๑╹◡╹)ﾉ This is your 36th meeting with Huoyun.

Well, this title might sound a bit alarmist, but it’s a fact in the thousands of years of development of fortune telling.
In ancient times, would a talented woman be able to pass the imperial examination and become the top scholar, or serve as a general on the frontier?

In a place where power and resources are extremely limited and either not open to women at all, it’s impossible to compete effectively. In such an environment, you have no say in your destiny.

Your “official stars” (representing power, career, and resources in Bazi) can only belong to men, because power and resources are concentrated in the hands of men.

You are forced to accept the resources and power given to you by middlemen—men—and to write your story around their needs. Under this constraint, your life framework becomes very limited.
Therefore, in traditional fortune-telling narratives, a man’s official star (官杀) represents his career, while a woman’s official star represents her husband. This is tantamount to assuming that women do not have careers, and that a woman’s career is her husband.

In fact, women who have had their fortunes told, especially by male fortune tellers over 40, are more or less uncomfortable.

Because more than 95% of traditional fortune tellers still use the Eight Methods of Female Fate from Ding Yuanji of the Ming Dynasty when evaluating whether a woman’s fate is good or bad.

It’s a mathematical model for evaluating women’s fates, using eight categories: Pure, Harmonious, Clear, Noble, Turbid, Unrestrained, Prostitute, and Licentious.

This model was developed by men, and to be fair, it’s quite accurate. In a society where men are both the referee and the player, a girl’s destiny can only be expressed within the confines imposed by men.

But think about this naming method… So, in men’s eyes, women are either saints or prostitutes.

The core of this algorithm is that you need to be a good wife and mother, and have a loyal and virtuous character to be considered a top-tier woman. I don’t care about your personal development at all, because you simply can’t succeed in this kind of society.

In plain terms: you need to be a top-notch service provider/subordinate to be considered a good woman.

What kind of society or people would create such standards? Inevitably, it’s bosses and those in positions of power.

They constantly tell women: “You have to be obedient and well-behaved. Don’t compete with me. Without me, no company will hire you, starting a business is impossible, and you’re doomed without me.”

Therefore, when younger generations of girls consult fortune tellers, they easily sense this discomfort. For example, seeing a woman’s chart with strong Eating God and Hurting Officer stars, they say, “Oh, men can’t stand you.” Seeing strong Officer and Killing stars, they say, “Your romantic history must be terrible.” The evaluation standard always revolves around: how good are you to men?

Because of the one-child policy, an entire generation of girls experienced, to varying degrees, the direct access to power and resources, without middlemen. The moment they were treated as objects of the gaze, they felt offended.

Whoever wields the pen holds the power of definition. When all ancient texts and core algorithms are written by men, it’s difficult to discuss a female perspective because they’ve never experienced the female situation; how could they possibly have a perspective?

But actually, we have had a brilliant female fortune teller—Xu Fu. Just how brilliant?

She once predicted that “Deng Tong would starve to death, Zhou Yafu would be ennobled, and Bo Ji’s child (Emperor Wen of Han, Liu Heng) would become emperor,” all of which were recorded by Sima Qian in the Records of the Grand Historian. She herself was ennobled as “Marquis of Mingci” by Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang, becoming the first woman in Chinese history to be granted a marquisate for her achievements in physiognomy.

Xu Fu herself was very independent-minded; in modern terms, she was somewhat of a feminist. Once, during a class on the I Ching, the teacher asked, “How old are you? Do you know what I’m talking about?” She blurted out, “The I Ching is a discipline that discusses change.”

The old man was deeply shocked, and then exclaimed, “Why is it a girl? If it were a boy, he would definitely become a great master of the I Ching!”

Xiao Xu directly retorted: “The Lianshan and Guizang texts emphasize the Kun Earth element and place it at the beginning of the hexagrams, indicating the importance attached to ‘Hou Tu’ (the Earth Goddess) and motherhood. From the perspective of our ancestors, women are not necessarily incapable of becoming masters.”

When I read this story, I was thinking, if Xu Fu had been able to develop a technique that was passed down only to women, perhaps some fortune-telling algorithms wouldn’t have been so extreme, leading to the tragedy of algorithms failing to fit the data from a purely male perspective, and opening up new possibilities for women?

However, with social changes, increased female participation in social affairs, and direct access to power and resources, the inherent strength of women’s birth charts can now be exerted in a wider space, allowing them to compete relatively equally with men—in other words, to engage in gender competition. We are gradually becoming more “destined.”

Women can become senior executives in large companies, work within the system, or go into business outside the system. They can choose to marry or remain single. We are no longer confined to a competitive environment where only about 5% of women might be trampled on each other.

I used to not understand female competition, but when I step outside the gender issue, I realize that it’s not actually two beautiful women fighting over a pig’s head, but rather a competition between two people in a subordinate position trying to curry favor with someone in a superior position who has access to resources.

The subordinate can be either a woman or a man, and the superior can be either a man or a woman.

The focus of the gender dilemma is not gender itself, but rather the power dilemma; it simply means that gender is the easiest trait to be exploited and manipulated.
Therefore, I strongly agree with the statement: “Men and women are not a gender, but a situation.” If you put a man in a woman’s situation, he will also become a woman.

The power of the Eight Characters (Ba Zi) will not disappear, but will only shift. Under the current social structure, it will find the most suitable corresponding phenomenon at the moment.

But I hope that everyone’s life can be free, authentic, and unconstrained by power or trampled on by others. I hope everyone can be happy, truly.