Get The Scoop On Choosing Auspicious Dates Before You re Too Late
It is a commonly heard practice among the older generations of Chinese to choose an auspicious date and period to perform certain rituals for example bathing of a child during their first month of birth to mundane matters such as going for a road trip for what ever important or quasi-routine significance. The most commonly available resource or tool is that of choosing the auspicious date Chinese Almanac or Tong Shu which the Cantonese-speaking readers preferably called it "Tong Sheng" (literally translated as Total Victory.)
For the illiterate of the past, the normally adopted approach could be to choose the Red print text printed therein as "safe date" to use and avoid the Black print text therein. However,this quick and dirty method is severely flawed and that Red print text dates are just good for certain events or matters and not well suited for others. This is the little known caveat that majority of lay people are not aware of till today. Thus, an excellent knowledge of its significance is essential whether or not it is safe to use it or otherwise. The exact same analogy applies to Black print text dates.
I have come across Red print text dates employed by my friends and clients experienced unfavourable outcome and also the damage is life-long until today. The rest is history now. It really is meaningless to elaborate on it. But a big lesson learned for them and for me personally.
The commonly available Chinese Almanac typically produced in areas where you will find strong Chinese Community who are still pro-Almanac referring ritual come from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and not forgetting the dwindling appreciation in western-oriented Chinese in Singapore. If one were to compare their different editions, you may realize the variations in information provided therein. You can find often contradictions and misprint of information leading to more confusion and compromised on its quality and accuracy because of its low-cost of producing it by simply following the age-old formula faithfully since it was made available from the imperial palace to the common people then who were largely farmers-oriented population.
These commoners and farmers used it then to identify when were the changing 24 sub-seasons and such as when to harvest including the knowing when are the different dates of Chinese oriented festivals and remembrance days for example Tomb-Sweeping day, Dumpling festival, Mid-Autumn festival, arrival of summer solstice, winter solstice and the beginning of spring where the Chinese celebrates the Lunar New Year.
In the Chinese Almanac, you'll find host of distinct methods printed therein for the readers to use. Alternatively, it may be very confusing if one do not understand the merits and demerits of each system presented therein.
To illustrate, there is the 28 Constellations method. Although it is useful for multiple purposes, it is outdated as it had not been calibrated to reflect the shifting axis of the earth revolution around the sun since it was first observed and then established the conventional formula to calculate the division of time with their respective deviation over the course of the 28 constellations progression patterns. On the other hand, the good news is the fact that such updates are conducted by NASA ( National Aero-Nautical Science Agency ) and offer a five yearly review to make certain that all of the navigational and communication are synchronized to compensated for the shifting axis of Earth revolution relative to the Sun position. This planetarium updates are available from NASA but one must incorporate it into the calculation methodology to obtain true local time.
In our contemporary world, people have introduced day-light saving time during summer period and then return to normal standard time in winter period. In addition, the whole world have been separated into 24 different time zones for standardization purpose or averaging the time within each time zone for convenience and ease of communication.
