Auspicious Dates

I was thinking about auspicious dates. The idea is to choose an auspicious date to begin an enterprise, or to start a course, or declare war - for what reason? In ancient times, one chose a date that was auspicious in the hope that one or other of the gods would smile on one's endeavours.

The ancient Romans had a way of deciding if the time was right for some enterprise to begin. Their soothsayers would watch the flight of birds. Depending on how the birds were flying, they could tell if the time was good or bad. In Latin, avis=bird, and specere=watch, giving us our word auspice. So the bird watchers were the experts in Rome, and even the Emperor would do nothing without consulting them.

There has been much interest in recent years in numerology. This is the idea that a number can be somehow associated with some type or principle. Thus it is now well known that the Chinese believe the number 8 to be a lucky number. This is apparently because their symbol for 8 is almost identical to that for "wealth". And they believe the number 4 is unlucky because, apparently, it is similar to the symbol for "death".

Incidentally, the number 8 is sometimes called the Forger's Friend, because every other number can be changed without being detected into an 8 by adding a line or a curve in the right place.

The number 7 has been widely held to be a lucky number in the western world. It is a number that is beloved of crap shooters, and their game is based on the curious fact that 7 is the most common total that can be obtained when two dice are rolled.

But I'm digressing again! My point in writing this article was to make the observation that it seemed very strange that the Chinese organisers of the Beijing Olympics should have chosen August 8th 2008 as an auspicious date to begin. One would have expected them to choose a date based on the Chinese calendar. Instead, they chose a date that is the 8th day of the 8th month after the Western New Year, and in a year that is 2008 years after the birth of the founder of a religion that is not widely followed in China. Furthermore, this birth date is now generally acknowledged to be inauthentic. Some authorities put the birth of Christ at around 4 BC, which would mean that this year is not 2008, but 2012. What if the actual birth was in 4 AD, then this current year would be 2004, most unfortunate for a Chinese soothsayer!

To make matters worse, the date of New Year is fairly arbitrary in the western calendar. The Roman New Year was in the month of March, so the 8th month would be October, as you can see by its name - "octo" means 8.

Suppose these arbitrary factors had combined to make the start date, which the planners believed so lucky, to be in reality, 04-04-04, that would be terrible, would it not?

But it was not terrible, it was very auspicious. Why? Because superstition, auspices, auguries, divinations, fortune telling, all take place in the MIND. The mind has a power that none of us yet fully comprehend. Some people even believe that nothing actually exists that is not the mind. But that is for another day. Suffice to say that I think it was the firmness of their conviction that the date was auspicious that in turn made it BE auspicious.

If you believe and do not doubt, you will say to this mountain, Go, and throw yourself into the sea, and it will be so. Sphere: Related Content