六曜 ROKUYO – A warning

六曜 ROKUYO – A warning

Some refer to it as science, some pseudoscience, and some consider it religion. Whatever it is, rokuyo suffers the same basic problem as astrology. Many people believe that the alignment of distant planets on their birth date can affect their lives. Maybe it can, but compared with what's happening on this planet, while we are living our lives now, must surely have infinitely more impact on our lives than astrology. And yet people change their actions according to some ancient sage's interpretation of distant planets. Very strange behaviour.

Before we delve into astrology too deeply, let's look at some fundamental flaws:

• Orientation: Astronomers of old had a geocentric belief that the earth was at the centre of the Universe, and the heavens rotated around the inside surface of a gigantic spherical ball. There is little similarity between this imagination and the observations of today's scientific astronomers. Astrologers, however, retain this geocentric concept.
• Calibration: Today's zodiac was formulated some 2,500 years ago and the solstice points have moved over 30 degrees to the west since then. So if you had been born a couple of thousand years ago, your star sign would have been different from what it is today. (Just because something has been around for a long time, doesn't mean that it's true. For many thousands of years, some people believed the earth was flat.)
• Celebration: When is our birth date? That is, when do we become beings? Or souls? Why should the zodiac be based on the time we take our first breath of fresh air? Are we not a being before that? At conception perhaps? Twins share the same 'birth sign', yet often have different personalities and talents.
• Rationalisation: Why should the position of distant planets on our birth day, have any effect at all on our lives? Why not the altitude, weather, air pressure, the local level of xenon gas in the air, magnetic field, or any other of the countless components of our very first environment? Why should we accept that the local environment has no significance, yet the position of stars billions of miles away dictate our future? The only force distant stars and planets have is their own gravity. This has negligible effect on earth.

Planets were once considered gods and their brilliance and mystery gave people astrology thousands of years ago. We have now lost touch with these gods, but some people still hang on to the ideas.

The same arguments apply to rokuyo.

Somebody emailed us recently, asking which rokuyo day it was on their wedding date, twelve years ago. They're now divorcing and wondered if their marriage failed because their wedding was on the 'wrong' day. It's useful to be able to put the blame on somebody or something else when things go wrong. Similarly when things go right, it's tempting to say "That proves rokuyo / astrology / tea-leaf-reading works!"

But let's see how this stands up. Here are seven world famous events from the past few years:

Therefore since the world has still
Much good but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.

A E Houseman

• Terrorist attack in New York on 11 September 2001. Rokuyo day: shakku. Bad luck all day (except at noon), which seems to support the rokuyo pattern. And yet this was very good news for the people who orchestrated the attack. So the 'support' for rokuyo can be rather subjective.
• Tsunami disaster in Asia on 26 December 2004. Rokuyo day: sakigachi. Good luck in the morning, bad luck in the afternoon. Oh dear... The earthquake that created the tsunami occurred at 7:59 in the morning. This doesn't fit in well with rokuyo. Let's look at another example:
• Hurricane Katrina smashed into Louisiana on 29 August 2005 and claimed 1,836 lives. Rokuyo day was again, sakigachi: good luck in the morning. Well, the hurricane made landfall in the morning, so there's another misfit for rokuyo.
• Cyclone Nargis on 2 May 2008 was much more devastating. 146,000 deaths officially recorded before the government stopped counting and thousands more people are missing, presumed dead. And the Rokuyo day? Lucky taian!
• The 2010 Haiti earthquake was on 12 January 2010. This was a tomobiki day, which is supposed to be good luck all day, except at noon. But an earthquake is no respecter of time and struck at 4:53 p.m. It is estimated that over 300,000 people died.
• The Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded at 21:56 on 20 April 2010. Eleven people were killed and many injured. The subsequent oil spill¹ in the Gulf of Mexico is now considered the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The rokuyo calendar shows it was sakimake, which is supposed to bring good fortune in the afternoon. It didn't.
• Finally, returning to Rokuyo's home here in Japan, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. This killed thousands and led to a tsunami, which killed thousands more. The earthquake also caused one of the world's biggest radiation leaks from the Fukushima nuclear power station. The earthquake struck on 11 March 2011, another tomobiki day, which is supposed to unlucky only at noon. The magnitude 9 earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. and the resulting 15 metre high tsunami reached the shores a few hours later, literally wiping towns and villages off the map.

Of course, nobody is suggesting that disasters and terrorist attacks are just 'bad luck'. Quite the opposite – for the shareholders of matériel suppliers, such an event is extremely 'good luck'. (Not to mention the hundreds of scam websites that always spring up within days of any disaster, to siphon donations to relief efforts.) For Cyclone Nargis it's less easy to see any good fortune from the event. The government has become more open to foreign aid since the disaster, but little else to support the notion that taian had any good luck for the nation. Many people will never recover and yet some Western companies will benefit from piecemeal reconstruction. And this brings us to the point we are trying to make:

Good fortune for one person invariably means a penalty for somebody else. Of course, everybody wants to have good luck and fortune – it's in our sorry greedy nature.

Remember Salim Sdiri of France? No? Well, I'm sure Tero Pitkämäki of Finland will.

Please enjoy the rokuyo pages, but put no faith in the system. Don't even be tempted to dabble in it. Rokuyo, invented by some unknown philosophers hundreds of years ago, is no match for the power you can generate within yourself to change your life. Be assured that you will get much more benefit in life by putting faith in yourself, your family, your friends, and of course, your God.

(This page was updated on 6 June 2006. That's 6/6/6, supposedly the mark of the Devil. And yet nothing unusually bad happened on that day...)

"Experience and wisdom are the two best fortune tellers." (Anon)

Other 'lucky' pages: