Determination over Predetermination

Feng Shui Divination as an Effective Means to Change One’s Destiny in Contemporary Hong Kong

Bibliographic Data

ID22353630
AuthorsL Yu (0000-0001-8025-6396, Museum of the History of Science, corresponding author), Lai Hung Yu (School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford Oxford UK)
Year2025
Volume6
Issue1
Pages119-149
Publication date2025-07-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Divination and Prognostication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2589-9198 • E-ISSN: 2589-9201
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/25899201-bja10025
OpenAlexW4412927110
LanguageEN
References cited26

The existing literature on destiny shows that people are far from passively fatalistic: instead, they proactively seek either to fulfill or to change the destiny believed to have been predetermined for them. My fieldwork on feng shui divination in contemporary Hong Kong showed that many people apply self-performed feng shui divination regularly in their homes and/or offices with the aim of intervening to change their destinies. I suggest that rather than just accept the existence and the tension of the contradictory features of malleability and fixity of destiny, the paradox is necessary to allow people to claim ownership and be responsible for their own lives. Understanding how people act to change their destinies might potentially allow us insight into the types of divinatory practices that may become more relevant in our urbanizing world. Destiny may have the potential to serve as the ethnographic concept to understand contemporary uncertainty

Art · Divination · Literature · Chinese history and philosophy · Engineering · History · Landscape and Cultural Studies