The Mandate of Heaven

Christer Johansson from Sweden

When visiting the city library in May, apparently by chance, my eyes fell upon that month's issue of "Sky & Telescope" magazine. It featured an article concerning planetary conjunctions and their meaning to people in the past, which I just glanced at. I didn't find it so interesting until recently when I learned more about Jiang Zemin's irrational and destructive behaviour.

A planetary conjunction is simply a fairly tight grouping together of the major planets in the solar system. In May there where two such groupings, one on May 5, the other on May 17. The event of two tight groupings within just a few weeks is very rare. In fact, the next single grouping is expected to take place September 8, 2040.

Many people today do not consider these conjunctions to carry any special implications, but people of the past certainly did. The article states:

"In China, the 'Mandate of Heaven' concept has been used since ancient times as both a framework for history and a guide to future actions. The basic idea is that Heaven awards ruling power to a sage-king because of his virtue. His descendants remain as Earthly deputies until they become morally corrupted, whereupon Heaven gives a sign in the sky that the Mandate has passed on to a different sage-king to continue the cycle."

The article goes on to give examples of conjunctions that heralded the dawn of a new dynasty in China's long history.

The first dynasty was started by Yu in the middle of the 20^th century BC. At that time, the five visible planets came to an amazingly tight conjunction on February 26, 1953 BC – by far the most compact one between 3000 BC and (as expected) AD 5000.

It was considered to be the Heavenly Mandate of the Hsia dynasty.

The 18^th Hsia king, Chieh, was however a cruel tyrant, and on December 20, 1576 BC, another conjunction signalled the passing of the Mandate. A new sage-king was found in Ch'eng T'ang who ruled the fief of Shang with unsurpassed virtue. Subsequently he founded the Shang dynasty.

The last Shang king, Ti Hsin, was vicious and barbaric. His time was up when a conjunction on May 28, 1059 BC signalled Heaven's will to Wen, a wise ruler of great integrity of the Chou region who is traditionally considered to have been the author of the I-Ching (Book of Changes). Wen founded the Chou dynasty.

The article goes on to mention a few more similar events. The magazine concludes the paragraph on the Mandate of Heaven with:

"If the current Chinese regime is susceptible to the traditional concept of the Mandate of Heaven, perhaps this month's planetary massing will be taken as an omen."

I have heard that Chairman Mao used to study the writings of the previous rulers of China. I cannot help but wonder if Jiang Zemin had those May 2000 conjunctions in mind when he made his dark and evil decision to persecute Falun Gong.