The Back-Pushing Pictures; Or, What ancient Chinese prophets had to say about us (1)

My thread in a nutshell: Chinese prophets from over a millennia ago may have predicted several important events during the last few centuries.

I wanted to start a thread about the connection between Chinese mythology and Freemasons, but it seems that the more reasearch I do, the more there is to research. Therefore, I'm writing a thread on a prophetic book instead. This is the first of a two-part series. The second part will come out in a couple of weeks, so hopefully, the suspense won't kill you before my second thread.

The prophetic book Tui Bei Tu (pronounced 'tway bay too'). You may have heard of the Tui Bei Tu, an book written during China's Tang Dynasty. It encompasses two millennia of prophecies and comprises 60 different pictures, each with two short poems to accompany it. Apart from the first (introduction) and last (conclusion), each picture represents one event in history.

The exact origins of the book are unclear. It must be written during the Tang Dynasty, most probably during Emperor Taizong's reign, because the book started from Wu Zetian's era. Rumour has it that it was written by Li Chunfeng and Yuan Tiangang under Taizong's request. Li used the Yi Jing (I Ching) (because, seriously, what else?) to write the book. After predicting the futures of over two millennia, Yuan gave him a shove on the back, telling him to shut up about the future and go home to sleep instead (hence the name 'back-pushing pictures').

Over the ages, many have added to and changed the book to make it 'sexier' and better correlate to historical events, so there are many, many versions of it. Perhaps the most famous version is Jin Shengtan's annotated one. It was stored away by the Qing Dynasty for safekeeping and was later stolen by the British. It was bought back by a Chinese and was widely distributed.

Jin was executed in 1661, so any prophecies after this year (prophecy #35 onwards) are genuine ones, original or otherwise. The ones before that, although amazing, are most likely fakes.

Of the many interpretations found on the Internet, my favourite are these three:
www.douban.com...
roc.myweb.hinet.net...
tbt.firedale.com...

The first is from a Mainland conspiracy group and the second is the Taiwanese personal website with rather extreme anti-American and anti-CCP views. The third appears to be a personal site which accepts comments from users. (Warning: some of the posters there appear to Falun Gong cultists.) However, as they've only contributed logic and theories to the analysis of the book, they can serve as references.

For convenience, I'll refer to them as 'the Mainland source', 'the Taiwanese source' and 'the third source' from now on.

There is little controversy about the pre-WWII prophecies (35-39). Most of them are really obvious and I think the average Chinese can decode at least half of them. I'll only post the first and last of the this group here, just to convince you how accurate it is. The rst of the post will be spent on the correlation between the TBT and current events.

#35:

The poems:

讖曰：
　　　頭有髮　衣怕白

　　　太平時　王殺王

頌曰：
　　　太平又見血花飛　五色章成裏外衣

　　　洪水滔天苗不秀　中原曾見夢全非

Anyone who reads the poems will understand that it's about a rebellion that eventually collapses because of internal conflicts. The second line of the first poem says, 'During great peace (taiping), kings/princes are killing kings/princes.' The first thing to come to mind is obviously the Taiping Rebellion, the largest failed rebellion during the Qing Dynasty. It was led by the Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who thought he was sent by god. 'Taiping' means 'great peace'.

Now, read my transliteration of the second poem (sorry for the lack of tones):
Taiping you jian xuehua fei, wu se zhang cheng li-wai yi.
Hongshui tao tian miao bu xiu, Zhongyuan ceng jian meng quan fei.

Noticed anything funny here? If not, you may need to be more observannt.
Taiping you jian xuehua fei, wu se zhang cheng li-wai yi.
Hongshui tao tian miao bu xiu, Zhongyuan ceng jian meng quan fei.

The prophet(s) knew the name of the rebel leader as well as his rebellion.

Now take a look at #39:

The first poem:

鸟无足　山有月
旭初升　人都哭

The bird had no feet. The mountain had a moon. The sun had just risen. The people all cried.

十二月中气不和　南山有雀北山罗
一朝听得金鸡叫　大海沉沉日已过

In the middle of the twelfth month, the qi was not agreeable. The southern mountain had a bird and the northern mountain a bird-catching net.
One morning, we heard the golden rooster cry. The sea was sinking and the sun had passed.

If you guessed the Second Sino-Japanese War, you're right. 'The bird had no feet' - if you replace the 'feet' in the Chinese character 鳥 with a 'mountain', you get 島, meaning 'island'. This character is also implied in the picture, which depicts a bird on a mountain. Japan's name means 'the origin of the sun', so 'the sun had just risen' = the Japanese militarists had just risen. The people all cried is a no-brainer - who likes militarists?

'The qi was not agreeable in the middle of the twelfth month' - the Mainland source says it was really wordplay and means 'right in the middle between the second and tenth months', which points to the sixth month of the lunar calendar, when the Lugouqiao Incident took place. The Taiwanese source says you can get the 王 character by putting together 十 and 二, and 'the qi was not agreeable' means that Wang Jingwei and Jiang Jieshi were disagreeing. I think both sources were ignoring the obvious: if you use the Western calendar instead, the twelfth month is December and the Nanjing Massacre took place in the middle of December.

'The southern mountain had a bird and the northern mountain a bird-catching net.' Both sources agree that the bird refers to Wang Jingwei, the traitor who was used by the Japanese to set up a false ROC government in Nanjing (The Jingwei was a bird in Chinese mythology and Nanjing means 'southern capital', hence 'the southern mountain had a bird'.) The second one is less clear. I prefer the Mainland conspiracy theorist's interpretation, which is that the net (luo in Chinese) refers to the Aisin Gioro (Aixinjueluo). The Taiwanese interpretation is that 'luo' refers to Russia (Eluosi in Chinese). I don't really buy this one because Russia is north of China all the time.

Continued in the next post

The 40th:


The three kids, according to the Mainland source, are Hong Kong, the PRC and the ROC. HK is the smallest kid, the PRC is the tallest kid and the ROC is the kid on the right. If the PRC and ROC want to throw the disc to each other, they must pass it to HK first. This was the situation between 1949 and 1990. I didn't consider the Taiwanese source's theory here because the site's owner was obviously influenced by his own extremist views.

The first poem:

一二叁四 无土有主
小小天罡 垂拱而治

One two three four, there's no land, but there's an owner.
Little heavenly spirits, rule with (what???)

The Mainland source provides three explanations for the 1234 part: Jiang Jieshi, Jiang Jingguo, Li Denghui and Chen Shuibian (false, since Ma Yingjiu was elected); the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau (but if that's the case, why are there only three kids on the pic?); Mao, Deng, Jiang and Hu (we can't say for sure until Xi becomes the official head of state, but I'm leaning towards 'no').

No land, but there's an owner is obvious - the ROC doesn't own the Mainland, but claims it.(Again, I'm not including the Taiwanese source's view; it's waaay too biased.)

'Little heavenly spirits' - Tiangang - refers to the 36 heavenly generals in common usage. None of the sources are very clear about this sentence, probably because they all focus on the next. I'm not too sure about the literal meaning of the last sentence - chui gong3 er zhi, but the Mainland source says it may mean 'sui gong4 er zhi', or 'rule by following teh Communists'. (It is important to note that in Cantonese, the original sentence would read 'seoi hung ji zi/soei hung ji dzi' and the new one would read 'ceoi hung ji zi/tsoei hung ji dzi' - the reverse of the Putonghua pronunciations.)

OK, time to move on to the second poem:

一口東來氣太驕 腳下無履首無毛
若逢木子冰霜渙 生我者猴死我雕

Yi kou dong lai qi tai jiao, jiao xia wu lü shou wu mao.
Ruo feng mu zi bingshuang huan, sheng wo zhe hou si wo diao.

In one breath (mouth), [pronoun omitted] comes east, his qi (air) too poud
There's no shoe under his feet, no hair on his head;
If [it] comes across (wood son), coldness emanates;
He who survives [me] is a monkey; he who dies [me] is an eagle

The first one is obvious - 'comes east' means 'Mao Zedong comes' (dong = east). Some say the 'come' (lai) refers to Zhou Enlai as well. The second probably refers to Jiang Jieshi's bald head; there isn't a consensus on the foot part, but it also seems to refer to Jiang in some way. The third line is unclear, but it may say that Chen Shuibian plays a big part in the annihilation of the ROC (that's pretty complicated wordplay and I won't explain it here). The last one seems to imply that the first ruler of the ROC is Sun Yixian ('husun' in Chinese is another word for 'monkey', apart from the 'hou' used here) and the last one is Ma Yingjiu ('ying' in Chinese is another word for 'eagle', apart from the 'diao' used here).

In the second part, we'll take a look at the Cultural Revolution, the reunification of China and the possible decline of the US.

Many prophecies from Tui Bei Tu have already been fulfilled. Poem 56 or Prophecy 56 mentioned about “Millions of miles of deadly smoke, on top a mushroom and at bottom a fountain.” It also showed “an image of two soldiers, each on a continent separated by the ocean. They do not use any kind of hand-held weapons. They only spew fire (coming from their mouth) at each other. Two fish jump out of the ocean (nuclear missiles from submarines ?) and two birds are flying against each other (warfighters like sukhoi?).” The prophecy can be found at wiki.

reply to post by inj3ct0r


I am confused.

Are you saying the Ancient Chinese predicted Call of Duty?

Originally posted by inj3ct0r
Many prophecies from Tui Bei Tu have already been fulfilled. Poem 56 or Prophecy 56 mentioned about “Millions of miles of deadly smoke, on top a mushroom and at bottom a fountain.” It also showed “an image of two soldiers, each on a continent separated by the ocean. They do not use any kind of hand-held weapons. They only spew fire (coming from their mouth) at each other. Two fish jump out of the ocean (nuclear missiles from submarines ?) and two birds are flying against each other (warfighters like sukhoi?).” The prophecy can be found at wiki.

edit on 5-2-2013 by inj3ct0r because: (no reason given)

I don't think number 56 is WWII, though I agree, it does look like warfare. For one thing, it says 'reaching the clouds', not 'on top of a mushroom'. I think 'fountain' was a misinterpretation; it's more likely talking about 黃泉, another word for diyu. Plus, the initial invasion was picture 39, so why would the surrendering of Japan be picture 56? Moreover, Mao Zedong, the Gang of Four, etc., were all placed between 39 and 56, and a lot of the prophecies from the mid-forties we haven't even come close to getting. (Especially the ones about saintly rulers...)

I had never heard of these poems, but they sound fascinating. I'll have to read them all later today.

The second instalment is here!
www.abovetopsecret.com...