The last month is the time of the year when people forward me various annual outlooks they have received from various sources and I am constantly being asked about the validity of forecast x vs forecast y.

Being born in the year of the Dragon and accordingly having many Dragon born friends, there is no end to the number of woe-is-us comments along with the “please say it ain’t so” questions when they are confronted with the prospect of a “tough” year for the Dragon.

The problem is people are frequently inundated with astrological forecasts at this time of the year. You get your hair cut and there’s a magazine with a forecast so you read that to pass time (and then lament woe is me on Whatsapp as you get your locks coloured). Banks, property developers, malls – everyone is offering some authority for a 2 hour discussion of the year and it’s outlook. Every astrologer offers up a video on YouTube now professing to give a short shrift on how the year will be for you. Even respectable publications wander in the realm of pulp fiction in an attempt to offer up content that fits public consumption (nevermind that this barely actually seems to be the basis for the publication of news on a daily basis).

As a professional astrologer, i say DEATH TO THE ANNUAL OUTLOOK.

Wait a minute you might be saying. But you sell a VIDEO CLASS teaching people how to do an Annual Assessment.

So now you’re saying DEATH TO THE ANNUAL OUTLOOK. (which you have been writing for the last few years?)

What gives?

Here is the difference.

A properly done, correctly approached Annual Assessment is an extremely useful thing.  An Annual Assessment is a personalised approach, driven by the individual’s own BaZi and their personal goals for a given year. It focuses on the specific challenges that will be faced by the person in a given year (not just “obstacles”), specific opportunities that will arise (such as wealth, career or specific outcomes, rather than generic “wonderful opportunities”) and it is outcome driven. Meaning, the Annual Assessment ascertains the odds of success or failure for a given set of goals, as defined by the individual.

An Annual Assessment doesn’t ask the question of what happens to a person in a given year and then tries to answer it with a generic non-answer. “Obstacles”, “great opportunities”, “beware the chicken crossing the road” – these are not ACTIONABLE, USABLE, GUIDANCE-DRIVEN replies. They are simply stock answers pecked out by someone playing scrabble with astrological vocabulary. As a result, any kind of Annual Outlook that is not based on your chart, or Day Master (at the very least) is a COMPLETE AND UTTER WASTE OF TIME.

Whilst the Annual Outlook has served a commendable purpose in the past in helping to make more people interested in Metaphysics, it has generally by and large also mostly just produced a pile of rubberneckers at most. Today, the Annual Outlook serves to cheapen the field of metaphysics and astrology. It denigrates the effectiveness of astrology as a means in which to achieve outcomes through strategic decision-making and action by dumbing down the content to meaningless pap. Mass produced content makes a mockery of the true power of BaZi and Feng Shui through it’s something for everyone formula. People start to think a magazine article can miraculously produce outcomes, when really, all it really has done is produce some water cooler conversation of limited value.

The average person is about as likely to improve their lives or duck a serious bullet from reading an Annual Outlook as someone is likely to lose a dress size reading a popsugar article on how to diet.

Oh, but it’s just conversation piece and something to talk about, is the common refrain. In other words, you’re taking it too seriously. My answer is wouldn’t 15 minutes of your time spent reading a useless annual outlook be better spent thinking about why it is that you don’t seem to have any specific goals or obejctives you want to achieve? Or reading a business article on Bloomberg. Heck if you’re going to waste time, sending a message to a long-lost friend via Facebook messenger might even be a more productive use of time.

As a professional astrologer, I KNOW an Annual Assessment can actually make a difference. I know that if you take it seriously and make use of astrology properly, it can have tangible and measurable outcomes and advantages. Which is why it annoys the hell out of me when people don’t take it seriously, and just assume that Astrology is fun at best.

So if you have actually read an Annual Outlook for the year of the Dog, I urge you to attempt to go cold turkey for the year of the Pig and skip reading them. In fact, unless you’re actually someone with specific goals and objectives, or driven by a particular outcome that you wish to achieve, or have some specific plans that you want to put into action – skip the Annual Outlook.

If on the other hand however, you are looking for some serious guidance, then the Annual Assessment that is personalised to your Day Master (if not your chart) is what you should be looking for. But at the same time, seriously guidance requires serious goals. Nothing annoys the professional BaZi consultant more than doing the “update” wherein it’s basically just a very run of the mill run through the year with little opportunity to make anything pop. Clients of course wonder what is the source of the consultant’s ire – after all, are they not simply ensuring that they get good outcomes?

Simple put, big goals require time. But also, rarely does a Consultant focus on the outcome of a given year. Securing a positive outcome for a given goal is always a cumulative affair – it depends not just on the year, but the 10 year Luck Pillar, and also the year before and the year after the year in question. So when clients want an update when nothing has changed (or their goals remain the same or they have no new goals), it is effectively like pushing a peanut up a hill for the consultant because it becomes a huge challenge to offer meaningful, significant, guidance (that has not already been dispensed). In fact, a proper BaZi consult should not just be for a given year, but cover the 10 year Luck Pillar, with focused guidance for up to 5 years (for the employed individual – self-employed individuals in certain businesses may benefit from the annual assessment but may also not need one).

It is precisely for the above reasons that I have not written an Annual Outlook on my blog for the last two years. People simply stop taking astrological information seriously. It becomes a novelty that cheapens the true value of the information.  But the most significant reason is this: I cannot find the time to write it in a way that actually gives rise to useful information for a broad swath of readers vs specific individuals.

Let me pause and specific what this exacting standard I have set for myself consists off. To my mind, USEFUL INFORMATION means something you can act upon.  It means a tip that actually produces a tangible result. It means advice that when taken, actually produces a positive outcome or enables the significant management of a negative outcome. In short, an early tsunami warning system, or the equivalent of a insider tip that makes you some money on the stock market.

The more technical Annual Outlook based on the year’s BaZi also requires a lot of time to write because the purpose of that is to be as accurate as possible (vs just spewing forth something that people just read for curiosity value). It is quite hard core economics/politics/world view/geopolitical in concept and that’s obviously not for everyone. And as my own knowledge and research has grown, the standards that I impose on my own writing have obviously increased (with a corresponding increase of time required just to write a single segment of the article with proper research and detailed figures or outcomes that makes sense vis-a-vis the industries). This is because even the rubberneckers who only read a magazine article expect accuracy (despite their apparent casual interest in the subject).

Basing the reading on the 60 Jia Zi or the individual 10 Day Masters would probably have sufficed, offering a vastly superior (for sure 100%) level of accuracy than your pulp fiction annual outlook. And off the top of my head, there are probably many ways in which I could write an annual outlook with a high level of specificity if i sat down and thought about it. (A combination of the 60 Jia Zi, the 10 Day Masters coupled with months would probably do the trick of something meaningful for everyone). A hard-core serious Annual Asseement of the economics/politics of the year however would require cross-referencing trending topics (ie: bitcoin, tesla, Trump, Brexit) with the BaZis of the various players.

But all this requires a great deal of intellectual energy and cross-referencing of metaphysical data in order to ensure that the forecast produced is clear, contains defined conclusions and is not laden with wriggle-room (just in case). Professional astrologers should be prepared to state with clarity their forecasts, because otherwise, we’ll always be right in hindsight. And that in turn, ends up effectively degrading the value of the insight, information and data that BaZi and other metaphysical sciences afford.