Nikki Blog

Many Thais are obsessed with fortune telling and horoscopes. We read the horoscopes and simply get absorbed in them. Remember what awaits us on Monday, or that we will get on well with a Taurus or a Monkey year, or our partner may cheat on us this week, or we are prone to accidents. This practice draws us away from the taking responsibility for our actions, and consigns us to the mysterious power of stars and karma from the previous lives.

Some thinks fortune telling and horoscopes are all harmless fun, but they are not. I heard of a couple who went to see a fortune teller, and was told that the girl will bring a curse to the guy’s family. His soon to be mother-in-law immediately objected to the relationship, which eventually caused the couple to break up. After all the years that they were courting, one day’s words from a fortune teller destroyed their love and trust. Astronomers can impoverish our society and harm both individuals and their families, and it’s time we stop deluding ourselves.

Are people so lacking direction in life amid political turmoil and wrenching social changes, that they need some ancient traditions to tell how we should live or whom we should be with? I remember hearing a fortune teller giving advice to others that we should be compassionate and do a lot of charity to overcome these unlucky periods or to be released from the karma we carried from previous lives, but shouldn’t we be charitable already with or without the prophecy?

I am not saying that fortune tellers are scammers, but people should listen to them with vigilance and not with blind faith. In this context, I’m not even talking about astrologers whom exploit the credulity of anyone who pays hard-earned cash. As a matter of fact, I think the vast majority of fortune tellers are sincere and honestly believe that they are doing more than cold reading or using their intuition. Nevertheless this does not give them the right to convince people that it is all right to believe something just because you feel deeply that it’s true.

The human race has achieved so much in scientific understanding of the universe; it’s a mind-shattering betrayal of our advancement to believe in astrology. I met people addicted to their favourite psychics - people who would not make decisions without consulting their astrologer, and people who were terrified because of negative predictions some reader had given them. In a stressful and unpredictable world it’s understandable that people turn to those who can offer them false guidance but I’ve seen too many horrible outcomes.

Fortune tellers tend to link religion into their prophecies because people can relate to them better without question. It may be true that astrology deserves study as a significant historical and sociological phenomenon, and it may be true that religion provides a good discipline to help people structure their life and lead a good one. But it would be a terrible mistake to juxtapose them together, if only for the false appearance of symmetry. Buddhism, for all of its non-theism, still adheres to reincarnation, which is used in fortune telling. For example, I am a human in this life, and I was an angel in the previous life, or whatever. Since Buddhist don’t believe in afterlife or permanent soul, it is difficult to pin down and discover what it is actually is that survives to be reborn in a subsequent life. The details become very evasive, sketchy, and unquestionable or risk offending the believer. One claims it is a re-born circle to be with Buddha, but what is it that is being reborn? The angel or the human, get my point?

I think it is horrifying that so many Thai people believe in astrology and that more newspaper column inches are devoted to horoscopes than to science. It belittles Thailand and undermines our society to have palm readers read politician hands, and pronounce who will be next in line as a prime minister. More often than not the reader simply offers a variety of obvious routes for us to go down. I wanted to raise “consciousness-raising”, in the same way that feminist wouldn’t now get worked up about their right because they are already made us aware of the issue. You don’t have to read a horoscope to be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled. I personally don’t believe that going to a fortune teller or reading a horoscope will make my life better or worse. If I imagine my world without it; I would not have lived my life any differently. Do you think that being told by the fortune teller to be more charitable is necessary in order for us to be so? Do we need them to tell us to be good?

I am no fortune teller but if you ask me for a prediction, then I would say people will continue to read the horoscope and go to the fortune teller, but hopefully they will question their motives for doing so after reading this column.