DAVEN WU EXPLORES THE ANCIENT ART OF FORTUNE TELLING AND ITS PLACE IN MODERN ASIA THE first time I had my fortune told, it was on a whim, dragged along by the two flatmates with whom I was living in Singapore at the time. A lifetime of movies made me expect a wizened old gypsy crone wearing a grubby headscarf and holding court in the gloomy shadows of a tent. I was a little disappointed to find myself in a brightly lit kitchen, staring at an elderly Eurasian lady with a sweet smile. I told her that I wanted to leave my job. She shufled the cards, invited me to cut the deck and then proceeded to lay out my future in neat rows. Her verdict: “You will only be able to leave towards the end of the year. Not earlier. Maybe September.” Seeing my dismayed look, she reshufled the cards and laid out the rows again, spades cosying up to diamonds, black to red in no apparent pattern. “I see the same thing,” she said finally. “It’s not time yet. You can’t rush these things. Just like it’s 11.30pm now – the clock will strike midnight when it’s midnight.” As it turned out, my boss refused to accept my resignation and strong-armed me into staying to complete a project. And when the task was finally completed, he accepted my notice without a word. It was early September. SEEING IS BELIEVING Many people I tell this story to dismiss it out of hand. Coincidence! Superstitious hocus-pocus! “You were going to quit anyway, you said so yourself,” one staunch Catholic told me. Perhaps. But this is Asia, and behind the gleaming skyscrapers, from Bangkok to Tokyo, fortune telling still holds a firm grip on lives, cutting across social and economic divides. In Singapore, devotees throng to the Goddess of Mercy Temple at Waterloo Street. The sound of bamboo divining sticks rattling in their holders fills the air, already dense with the incense of countless prayers. Kneeling en masse, supplicants pray to the giant Buddha statue seeking answers to their problems. Eventually the bamboo holders shake out a marked stick which is exchanged for a slip of paper matching the marking. On it are heaven’s pre-printed answers. In Mumbai, Indian mystics coax small birds in cages to pick out cards that will decide marriage dates and solve nuptial breakdowns. A successful Swiss-educated executive I know based in Kuala Lumpur makes a beeline for her psychic whenever there is a minor crisis in her life, and when her marriage fell apart, she all but camped out at Madam Kong’s. Rumour has it that when Singapore’s underground station was being constructed, a Chinese fortune teller advised authorities that the tunnelling had upset the earth spirits and great misfortune would befall the country. Th at is, unless a ba kua – the Chinese version of a pentagram – could be introduced into each household to ward off this disaster. Given that the population of four million consisted of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and a good number of atheists, the situation presented a delicate problem. The solution was a rather ingenious one – a new one-dollar coin was struck with the eight-sided ba kua etched onto one side. In this way, there was a spiritual shield in every household and disaster was averted. Or so the story goes. IN THE BEGINNING Fortune telling has its roots in antiquity and religion. The Babylonians carved mystical notches into divining bones and inspected the heavens for signs. The ancient Romans and Greeks conducted their aff airs by the peculiar curl of entrails extracted from sacrificed sheep. In Korea, soothsayers peered into the night sky for portents. Other branches of fortune telling have their roots in practical medicine. In ancient China, patients – especially women and royalty – would not allow doctors to touch them. Diagnoses thus had to be made from an inspection of the only visible body parts, the face and hands.

”A successful Swiss-educated executive I know makes a beeline for her psychic whenever there is a minor crisis in her life”

From this practice developed xiangshu, or physiognomy, the art of fortune telling by reading a face – large earlobes and noses, for instance, are believed to bring great prosperity. In the same way, separate branches grew out of examining the bumps and shape of a person’s head (phrenology) and the lines on their hand (palmistry). Astronomy and astrology began as a single discipline in India and China – scrutiny of the sky birthed mathematics, the development of the concept of time through the shift ing positions of stars and the idea that that all time was also recorded in the twinkling sky. Trade routes and military conquests brought these beliefs out of their home countries and sprinkled them far beyond their borders. For this reason, there are similarities in the way palms and cards are read, for instance, in communities along the Silk Road from China to Damascus. Even today, there are herbalists in India as in metropolitan Hong Kong who receive their prescriptions from the netherworld – and judging by the long queues at Wong Tai Sin Temple, business is booming. For in Asia, the past sits easily with the world of computers. Astrologers are routinely consulted on the most auspicious day to open a shop, to marry, to leave a job. No one blinks an eye, wiTheven otherwise faithful Christians showing up for their yearly tarot card reading with their friendly neighbourhood psychic. Yvette Sitten, a practitioner of the Isis Lotus art of healing and fortune telling, believes that fortune telling still holds a firm grip in modern Asian simply because it has always been part of Asian culture. “It’s ingrained in us,” says Yvette. “We understand that there is something out there that is beyond ourselves. Even though we’re educated and modern-thinking, there is a distinct return to Asian philosophy – traditional Chinese medicine, ayurvedic spa treatments and so on – and fortune telling is just one of the aspects.” In Malacca, there are mystics who read the past in the soles of the feet. In Hong Kong, anxious parents make appointments with feng shui masters to decide on the most auspicious names for their children.

In Hong Kong, anxious parents make appointments with feng shui masters to decide on the most auspicious names for their children

My best friend took her son – debilitated with a constant stream of fevers that bafled even the best Harley Street doctors – to a Chinese-Muslim fortune teller in Xi’an and was told that the boy’s Chinese name contained too much fire. Th us the fevers. In the same way that someone might change Jane to Jayne by adding a “y”, the fortune teller added a few strokes representing water to the boy’s name so as to quench this fire. His mother reported that the fevers stopped immediately. “Do you believe changing the way his name is written really cured him?” I asked. She shrugged. Her son was running around again. Th at was all she cared about. As Yvette points out, “Our world is in crisis. We’re looking for answers and we’re listening more to our intuition. A belief in fortune telling goes beyond the cynical, educated mind.” A QUESTION OF FAITH For the Thais, fortune telling is a natural way of life. In Bangkok, in the shadow of Wat Traimit’s exquisite Golden Buddha, are intricate machines that spill out pieces of paper on which the future is written. Singapore’s Madam Yeo claims to be the world’s only practitioner in the ancient lost art of gentai gong tiuhe, in which ordinary playing cards are laid out in the eight corners of the bak kua, and the flow of nature and the future are read. When I discover that “Is my husband having an aff air?” is the most common question asked, I venture that these are rather mundane matters to be troubling the spiritual world about. “These are real emotional pains of a human being,” she replies. “But then you get other types who come to see me. A high-ranking governor from China asked me whether he would win the next election and who would betray him.” Th roughout Malaysia and China during the annual Festivities of the Hungry Ghosts in August, few people conduct business transactions and fewer still will move into a new home. The fear is that the spirits who roam the earth at this time will follow the packing boxes and make themselves comfortable in the guest room. Just this past year, a magazine editor in Kuala Lumpur told of how his fortune teller had advised that his recent string of bad luck had been on account of the unfriendly ghosts that were loitering outside his home. “They want to play with me. Can you imagine?” he said. A lemon was wrapped up with holy ash in a bright orange cloth and hung from his front door. The string of bad luck stopped. TIME WILL TELL And so the stories go on, as they have since time immemorial, and the future patiently unfolds itself. For the parties involved, whether one believes in fortune telling itself is not the point. Rather, it is in the comfort that the fortune teller’s tale brings, the balm to what Madam Yeo calls humanity’s “emotional pain”. If the predictions – whether based on the position of a mole on one’s body or on one’s time of birth – do come true, then all the better. And if they don’t, well, perhaps it’s not quite midnight yet. g WHERE TO GO Madam Yeo, Singapore: Madam Yeo practices the lost Tang Dynasty art of gentai gong tiuhe, which measures the flow of the universe through the ba kua. Her regular clients include embassy o[fb03] cials, Australian doctors and mainland Chinese o[fb03] cials. Tel +65 6747-9977 Wong Tai Sin, Hong Kong: Off Lung Cheug Road, New Kowloon, this is one of the SAR’s largest temples. Its crowded fortune teller’s alley is a dizzying warren of over 150 stalls, wiTheach fortune teller specialising in a particular area of divination, including palmistry, bui and fukay. Chaukhtatgyi Paya, Yangon: Burmese fortune tellers combine Thai and Chinese elements in their art. On Shwegondine Street, a short distance from the Shwedagon Paya, is a little-visited temple with an enormous reclining Buddha. Clustered around the platform are a clutch of fortune tellers off ering astrological and palm readings. Montien Bangkok Hotel: The fortune teller at this hotel is very well regarded in the city. There are also 10 registered experts from the National Astrological Association of Thailand who provide horoscopes and astrological advice to anyone who wants their fortune read on the third floor of the Old Siam. Available daily from 10am to 6pm. Montien Bangkok Hotel, tel +66 (0)2 234-8060 ext 5321 GLOSSARY OF TERMS Ba kua: The eight-sided version of a pentagram, this is a powerful shield and spiritual conduit in Buddhist and Taoist mysticism. Bui: Consists of two wooden sticks with markings on them. A supplicant prays a question and tosses the sticks. The answer is yes or no, depending on how the sticks land. Feng shui: The Chinese believe that nature determines the flow of luck, so the goal is to remove blockages to good luck and put up barriers against bad luck. This is particularly relevant in home interior design, where the precise positioning of, say, a house or a mirror is believed to harness or hinder the flow of fortune. The Indian version is called vastu. Fukay: The spiritual equivalent of a medical doctor. The fortune teller receives the prescriptions from the netherworld, which are then filled by a neighbouring herbalist. Palmistry: The art of reading palms in the belief that a person’s fortunes, past, present and future, are etched in the lines of one’s hands. Tarot: A set of usually 78 playing cards depicting vices, virtues and elemental forces, used in fortune telling.