"It's bad luck to be superstitious." (Andrew Mathis)
We don't want to be seen as promoters of the idea of Rokuyo – we reject the notion that it has any mystical power at all.
Here we explain why.
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:
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:
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.
13 July 2007 (Friday 13th, generally bad luck but also Tomobiki – good luck all day, except at noon) saw them at a GIAAF Golden League meet in Rome's Olimpico Stadium. Tero's sport is the javelin; Sdiri's sport is the long jump.
Tero threw his spear 80 metres, and Sdiri caught it. In his back, straight into a kidney! Talk about unlucky Friday 13th! Of course, if it struck him a few centimetres higher it would have killed him, so he was lucky there. And being out of the competition meant the other long jumpers had a better chance of winning. So lucky for them too.
And staying with sport: The opening ceremony of 2008 Olympics in Beijing was deliberately chosen to be 8 p.m. on 8 August (8/8/8/8); eight being an auspicious number. On the same day, people went onto the streets around the world to recall the 20th anniversary of a protest on 8 August 1988 (8/8/88), when millions of Burmese had marched throughout the country calling for an end to military rule. After that march, three thousand protesters were executed.
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:
| 1: | Oil company PR departments prefer the soft word "spill", rather than more devastating terms such as "gush" |