Splashed across the newspapers and media of Singapore and other countries are news headlines announcing the escape room from police detention of Mas Selamat Kestari, a leader of the terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiah. This gave me the inspiration to try to see if the YiJing (I-Ching also known as Book of Changes) would be able to shed some light on it.
To do YiJing Divination, we have to convert information to Gua (or Trigram) symbols. For the starting point, I have used the time and date as the upper and lower trigram. ie 26022008, 1605
Take the sum of each, divide by 8 and get the remainder of, we have 4 for each, which is represented by Zhen Gua, ie the trigrams looks like
Event Trigram
Zhen
Zhen
Process Trigram
Kan
Gen
Outcome Trigram
Zhen
Dui
I didn’t want to confuse you guys who don’t know how YiJing divination works with all the steps I take to convert the trigrams. But all the Trigram narrations can be found in most YiJing books. Interpretation differs from person to person though. we will look at the image of the each trigrams first.
Event Trigram is Zhen over Zhen. Zhen in the YiJing represents thunder, shock and male. As we all know, the event that happened, involved a male and shock the whole world. This being an all Yang trigram is beneficial to the male. It is thus not surprising that he has thus far remain at large.
But we need to examine further the process and outcome trigram to get a better feel of his fate in this escapade.
Process Trigram is Kan over Gen. Kan represents middle seniority male (fittingly for Mas Selamat) and water. Gen represents hand and mountain. In Chinese, toilet means Room for Washing (Kan water is appropriate) Hand (Gen is apppropriate). Fittingly, this Trigram throws up an image of toilet and male for which we all know he pull off his escapade during the trip to the toilet! Flipping open the YiJing book I have, stunningly, it cites an image of a limping man involved in a very difficult task. Hmm, didn’t Mas walks with a limp? Didn’t we all know that it is very challenging for him to make such an escape right under the noses of the Singapore Police? It is said that the directions that are auspcious for this man is in the south west. If Mas haven’t been caught yet, does it mean he did take the south west direction to escape? Should we inform the police to turn their attention to the southwest? Maybe he intended to escape to Batam via ferries at Harbour Front? Or did he hide at one of the outlying islands near Sentosa, waiting for his accomplice sampan to come pick him up?
Interestingly southwest in Yijing also represents women. Didn’t we know the escape also came about because his family member (most likely to include his wife) are visiting him? Or could he have a female accomplice or mole in the police station?
I am sure most readers will be interested to read the interpretation of the Outcome Trigram at this juncture. Unfortunately, my brain is tired after a full day’s activity. Stay tuned for the next episode of the YiJing Divination of the Great Escape of Mas Selamat