183. 📕 (Chapter VI) Baguazhang art of war - Reading the weather (like a Tianqiren 天気人)

☳ Because the Baguazhang 八卦掌 master moves in a circle, Heaven blesses the master with the ways of the sky. The Swimming Dragon form embodies the typhoon. Round and round it goes; this way and that. So that when the master has learnt the ways of Qigong ☳ 氣功 and Gongfu ☵ 功夫, the next level is Tianqi ☶ 天気 mastery. ☵ To be a good Tianqiren or Weatherman, a person must be good at reading the weather and then be able to plot the future direction of one's current state of affairs to a profitable outcome. ☶ This is more than just predicting weather patterns and seeing weather forecasts on the nightly News - It is about knowing where the storm will hit and to what severity, so that when the king asks "How will it impact my kingdom?" The Weatherman can follow up the most likely scenarios with the potential opportunities to follow. Which is what the king actually wants to know. ☰ Cyclonic weather patterns, freakish electrical storms, and plummeting celestial fireballs traditionally heralded the end of kingdoms and dynasties, the world over. While it is easy to hide behind modern science and dismiss these things as superstitions. Very few people realise that the underlying motivations of why scientists like to study these things is that 1) It gives them a certain amount of power and authority in these matters, and 2) For the government of the day, to ignore the warnings these events bring, can spell calamity. For, it is not the disasters themselves that are the concern but the direct impact on the people themselves and in turn their reaction to the disasters, should the government be seen as incompetent. ☷ And it is here, where the Tianqiren diverges from the weatherman of the nightly News. It is the Tianqiren's role to be able to read The Will of the people and know like the ocean currents, how the people will react, by when and by how much. And all of this is born out of repeated observations of how people actually do things and not what they say. ☱ Like here in Australia for example, after two weeks of social distancing, the word on the street is that people are starting to have had enough of the "we're in this together stuff" and there is a feeling of being under some sort of voluntary martial law. Which means that the restrictions - while meaning well - is starting to remind the men of the days when Australia was a penal colony. And for the women, it's starting to feel like social rejection because social intimacy is not allowed (except immediate family). On top of that, some medical experts are starting to suggest that anybody who is outside must wear a mask at all times, which sounds a lot like certain countries around the world. ☲ Now at the moment, nobody is advocating anything extreme but a good Tianqiren knows and would advise their boss that trouble is brewing when people start calling for heads to roll. And given that I am only using the Coronavirus COV-19 as a real-life working example of it having existed for only 5 to 6 months, the change in the kingdom's state of affairs has been shockingly fast! ☴ I understand that for most Baguazhang practitioners, the term Tianqiren is a new one and I have to admit that I first came across it in author Fonda Lee's novel 'Jade City', but given that Baguazhang is of Chinese origin, it is a better term to use than the Mafia's consigliere or the Chinese word for sage Zhi 智, which can also mean Saint. One of the best historical examples was Zhuge Liang 諸葛亮 the strategist (181 - 234AD). A veritable great mountain in his own right.