REVOLUTION NUMBER NINE
As Burma suffers its latest military coup, SD TUCKER finds its future bleak under a conveniently superstitious junta obsessed with astrology, numerology and bloodbaths of a strangely literal kind...
“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge... At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” So spoke Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, as the nation finally broke free from colonial chains at the highly symbolic hour of 12am on 15 August 1947; as a new day dawned, so did a new chapter in Indian history. Regrettably, it was written in blood. The disaster of partition immediately followed, leaving countless warring Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims dead across the subcontinent, as the Raj split messily up into its new constituent parts. Also soon to break away was the ancient land of Burma, arbitrarily swallowed up as an administrative province of British India in 1886. Its autonomy from London came not at the administratively convenient hour of one second past midnight, but at the rather more obscure-sounding time of 4.20am on 4 January 1948, when the Burmese people awoke not to “life and freedom”, but its exact opposite. The unusual choice was not random, but had an astrological basis, with the precise ‘natal hour’ of Burma’s liberty considered its literal birth date. Just as astrology teaches human beings’ own trysts with destiny are governed by the placement of planets at the minute of their birth, so it was with an entire country. Not for Burma would there be instant, partition-style chaos – instead, stability would surely reign. In a way, it did. Sadly, it came imposed by the jackboot of a murderous military junta whose horoscope-loving Generals have ruled all things under heaven ever since.
THE BIRTH OF VENUS
Following an ostensible transition towards civilian government in 2011, on 1 February 2021 Burma’s in fact still all-powerful armed forces (or Tatmadaw) staged a violent coup to grasp full and open power once more, leading to shooting of civilian protestors and arrest of opposition politicians. What comes next is unclear, but the forecast is obvious as, appropriately for a Buddhist country, it has all happened many times before.
According to occidental astrological analysts, the problem is that the precise brand of astrology the Burmese use is derived from the Indian Vedic school of Hindu tradition, rather than the rival form Westerners are more familiar with. Burmese astrology, while sharing the same twelvefold division of the zodiac as us (albeit with some different ruling animals), charts its horoscopes upon a sidereal rather than a solar basis, taking the alignment of stars into account more than the relative tropical position of the Sun. Furthermore, the zodiacal days of the week govern Burmese destinies. Confusingly, there are nine of these, not seven, as you might expect. Six weekdays have their own unique sign, but Wednesday has two, one for am, one for pm. Yet there is also a special ninth sign,
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Ketu, which rules over all the others – the number nine being considered easily the most auspicious of all digits domestically, echoing the customary Nine Virtues of Buddha. But age-old Vedic-style astrology does not make use of the once-unknown
THE FAULT LIES NOT IN YOURSELVES, BUT IN YOUR STARS
planets Uranus, Neptune or Pluto, leading Western astrologers to guess that, in their ignorance of this powerful triumvirate, the soothsayers who advised Baby Burma be delivered at precisely 4.20am ensured her freedom would be stillborn. Precise analyses of the natal fate inadvertently ordained vary, but most agree Mars, God of War, was in a particularly elevated position on Independence Day; as a result, martial Tatmadaw rule down the barrel of a gun was inevitable. The position of Mars in relation to Mercury, Messenger of the Gods, was a most dominant one, enabling the junta to crush and control national media, via censorship. Jupiter, King of the Gods, was also rising at 4.20am, thus ensuring the emergence of a line of all-powerful dictators, while the complementary position of “Stabilising Saturn” meant Generalissimo Jupiter’s rule would be unassailable. Meanwhile, Pluto was in an orbit of influence too, Pluto being not only God of the Underworld, but also God of Gold. Burma once had the secondrichest regional economy, blessed with natural resources like oil, rubies and timber, but no longer: corrupt Tatmadaw plutocrats pocketed the cash for themselves. One of the Generals’ main sources of income is drugtrafficking; the once-overlooked Neptune is the stellar “Ruler of Heroin”, heralding the dawn of a narco-state.
The sole hope lay in opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, born the daughter of Burma’s revered leader of military resistance to both British rule and later Japanese occupation, Aung San, on 19 June 1945 at the will of Heaven itself. Until the junta temporarily let her act as de facto Burmese PM (in name, anyway) from 2016-2021 during their fake decade-long pseudodemocratic experiment, and she began defending them against charges of genocide, Western do-gooders were always assuring Suu Kyi that “the Sun rises out of Uranus”, but some adulatory astrologers took this literally. Before her apparent collaboration,
2 the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner and devout Theravada Buddhist meditator (she had plenty of time to develop her skills during 15 years of Tatmadaw house-arrest) was acclaimed as a Bodhisattva, a Buddhist angel in human form, with acolytes placing
her image in domestic shrines for home worship. Star-gazers have said Suu Kyi’s horoscope shows her embodying Venus, Goddess of Love, in conjunction with Mars, making her a strong-willed peace-maker, redirecting her soldier father’s indomitable will to win by making love not war. She also had a “Mars-Pluto square”, as did Mandela and Gandhi, who each liberated their people in the end. Known simply as ‘The Lady’, when Burma’s collective “Venus archetype” awoke, it was foretold Suu Kyi would sweep all before her. Yet today Venus’s celestial body lies dimmed within Tatmadaw
custody, charged with such heinous crimes as “the possession of illegal walkie-talkies” – another defeat for Mercury. As the
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Generals might say: the fault, dear Burmese, lies not in your selves but in your stars. There’s absolutely zero you can do about your dismal cosmic kismet – so don’t even try, or you’ll end up behind bars too.
DESTINY’S CHILD
Burma was initially a democracy following Britain’s 1948 exit, under the leadership of the liberation-hero U Nu, a self-proclaimed Bodhisattva himself. However, separatist insurgents ensured there was no true postwar peace, leading the Generals to first seize power on a caretaker basis in 1958, unifying the country by force. In 1960, U Nu returned as elected PM, but by 1962 the Tatmadaw were back for good. The Maoist-influenced junta of this era pursued a ‘Burmese Way to Socialism’, seizing private industry and expelling many of the nation’s Indianheritage traders, who had been brought in to help develop the economy under British rule. In earlier life, the military dictator who led both coups, General Ne Win, had seen his own business fail at the hands of superior Indian competitors; he now made everyone else’s businesses fail too, and what had once been the world’s largest exporter of rice suffered the usual Maoist fate of food shortages. When Win’s isolationist ‘Bamboo Curtain’ came down in 1962, GDP per capita was just below $700; by 1988, when he finally went, it was around $200, the only boom-industry left that of poppy-farming for the Tatmadaw opium fiends.
Comrade Win did OK, though, amassing an estimated fortune of $4billion. In 1960, while still only caretaker leader, he had visited Communist China to sign a treaty of friendship. Come 1962, in imitation of the all-powerful Mao, Win adopted the title ‘Chairman’, tore up the constitution, abolished parliament and streamlined the lines of leadership: “One blood, one voice, one command,” was the General’s new slogan. Of Chinese ethnicity himself, Win’s real birth-name was Shu Maung; his adopted dictator-name meant ‘Brilliant Sun’, first adopted as a nom de guerre while warring with London and Tokyo in the 1940s. This was not just vanity, but also Win’s attempt to improve his astrological good fortune
– a Burmese person’s fate is thought to be determined by their name as well as their birth-stars. This was why, when Win was finally deposed in 1988, his successors changed Burma’s name to ‘Myanmar’; soothsayers guaranteed this would ensure the land a happier sidereal fate than it had enjoyed under Win’s Sign of the Sun.
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Win was something of an amateur fortune-teller himself; if you didn’t cross his palm with silver when he demanded it, he’d have you shot. Sometimes he would even shoot himself. When warned of impending assassination attempts, he would pump bullets into his own reflection in a mirror in acts of apotropaic sympathetic magic. Likewise, when massacres were predicted, he would stand before a glass and trample in bowls full of dog-entrails and pig-blood to ensure the butchery affected only regime enemies. His official Board of Astrologers told him to beware of dogs, particularly those with crooked tails. Whenever he travelled, soldiers would clear streets of strays with guns. Dolphins were luckier for the General. He would bathe in tubs filled with their blood to lend him extended youth, only dying at the age of 92.
Advised that, as the embodiment of Burma’s soul, the national lucky number of nine was his own favourable figure too, Win was bound to last into his nineties. Like a cat with a speech impediment, he also allegedly had nine wives. Just to make absolutely
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sure of nonagenarian status, in 1987 Win abruptly ordered all 100 kyat banknotes be withdrawn overnight and replaced by notes of 90 kyat and 45 kyat, with 4+5 equalling 9, and 90 divided by 2 being 45; hence his living until 92 (90+2). The sudden,
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unannounced policy was bad luck for his subjects, many of whom kept their cash under mattresses. Overnight, their pitiful, non-exchangeable savings were rendered worthless. Win would also walk over bridges backwards to propitiate spirits and appear at state functions dressed in classical regalia as an old-time Burmese king, fancying himself one of their rightful line. One of his nine wives’ veins ran with true royal blood, which he hoped to absorb by association, albeit not in his Dolphin Bathroom this time. In 1970 he capriciously decreed all cars must drive on the right-hand side of the road, not the left as before, causing chaos as motorists’ existing vehicles were obviously left-hand drive models. The alleged reason
was that an astrologer had advised him that his Maoist policies had taken Burma too far to the left, necessitating this most literal of remedies.
7Ne Win followed the Burmese magical tradition of yadaya, where numerological and other spells are prescribed by astrologers to alter your luck. In 1961, the elected PM U Nu had already ordered 60,000 sand-pagodas, whose measurements were based upon the sacred number nine, be constructed across Burma to end separatist rebellions on yadaya grounds, so Win was not unique. Yet Tatmadaw reliance on yadaya
may be exaggerated for propaganda: if the junta have the stars on their side, as well as all the tanks, it makes them look harder to overthrow. Some tales told about Win have the hallmark of myths, in which the inscrutable leader’s many diktats are simply ascribed to his belief in magic. He may have had other reasons for altering the Highway Code or the currency, but, as a Mao-style quasi-royal despot, felt no need to explain them to the “commoners” he so despised. Alternatively, some yarns were possibly spun wholesale by opposition figures who, although they often use yadaya too, know that portraying their rulers as mad dolphinslayers at war with their own reflections makes them look unfit to rule in the eyes of less star-struck Western governments, who might impose harmful, anti-regime sanctions. By contrast, the more mainstream Buddhist Aung San Suu Kyi has specifically stated she does not possess magical powers, whatever her supporters may say. Even so, when her opposition movement rose up against Ne Win on 8 August 1988 – or 8/8/88 – they deliberately sought to counter the now evil number nine, whose sudden invasion of their banknotes helped spark the revolution.
General Win’s forces counterattacked on 18 September, the ninth month (1+8=9). A 2007 anti-junta revolt was also suppressed beginning on the same date – rebels chose the wrong year, as 2+0+0+7=9, causing an incredibly precisely-numbered crowd of 98,100 people (9=8+1+0+0) to rally to the junta’s cause in response. Nonetheless, Ne Win was forced to stand down in 1988, causing the oppressed population to party like it was 1999; but, despite Win’s exit, the Tatmadaw itself remained.
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COUNT YOURSELF LUCKY
Burma’s dictator from 1992 onwards, General Than Shwe, had the competing lucky number of 11, with 65-year prison sentences for his opponents (6+5=11) being delivered at 11am during the 11th month of November. Amnesties for 9,002 lucky prisoners in the reverse-numbered year of 2009 reflected that 2+0+0+9=11 too, even though the true number of prisoners released by ‘The Bulldog’ may have been just a few dozen, the 9,002 officially announced being merely symbolic. In 2009, he also toyed with using the junta’s cash to buy Manchester United for $1bn, planning to invest heavily in their first 11. There are ‘11 fires’ in Buddhist tradition – ills like death, despair, ageing and pain – which Shwe sought to divert onto others via yadaya, thus making his 2011 retirement long and happy. Another way to evade these Buddhist ills was by transforming into a Buddha himself. When, in 2009, then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon visited Burma’s sacred Shwedagon Pagoda on official business, he may have wondered why the new jade statue of Buddha on display looked so familiar – the answer being that it was carved with General Shwe’s own face!
This surely helped counteract the yadaya voodoo-dolls reportedly commissioned by Ne Win’s traitorous grandsons in 2002, one of which also bore the head of Shwe. A former KGB-trained psy-ops officer, Shwe perhaps invented this rumour himself as a way to discredit his rivals.
The ‘Great Father’ Shwe has even been seen openly dressing as the ‘Great Mother’ in items of women’s clothing, not in order to celebrate diversity, but for yadaya. Opponents have accused Shwe of donning robes and engaging in cannibalistic rites of human sacrifice, but here he was just seeking to court Lady Luck through imitation of her feminine fashion-sense. As David Beckham once proved, men can wear sarongs too, but in Burma the male skirt is a longyi, whilst the female one is an acheik, identifiable by their distinctive patterns. In 2011, Shwe and his top Generals appeared on TV all wearing acheik skirts, looking to Burmese eyes like a coven of Eddie Wizzards. The popular view was that, by dressing like girls, the junta hoped to neutralise their nemesis Suu Kyi’s innate female energies via yadaya, reversing The Lady’s karma. Astrologers had prophesied a woman would one day rule the land, so by dressing accordingly, the Generals ensured ‘she’ would be General Shwe. Women’s clothes are held to possess malign magical powers in Burma, as touching them drains a man’s hpoun, or life-force; supposedly, knickers and sarongs are hidden in hotel rooms prior to foreign dignitaries’ stays to make them more pliable. In 2007, exiled dissidents started a ‘Panties for Peace’ campaign, encouraging women to send Burmese Embassies worldwide pairs of used knickers to drain regime willpower. Wearing women’s skirts willingly may have
caused such spells to rebound on their casters. A more plausible explanation is that acheik sarongs’ patterns are based on those once worn by pre-colonial Burmese royalty, so the transgender Tatmadaw were just symbolically broadcasting their divine right to rule. Similarly, when in 2006 Than Shwe ordered Burmese farmers to devote their energies, and seven million acres of their land, towards growing physic nuts, even telling city-dwellers to plant some in their window boxes, the idea arose that the nut’s native name, kyet suu, meant MondayTuesday – the reverse of Suu Kyi, meaning Tuesday-Monday. Thus, by planting Kyi Suu everywhere, Suu Kyi’s own political growth would never take root. Actually, physic nut oil can be added to diesel and the junta just hoped to reduce their costly import of fuelreserves, an idea so desperate that people preferred to invoke yadaya as an explanation instead. 9
In 2020, 66 (that’s 99 upside-down) statues of Buddha carved with odd spiky hair and “unusual hand-gestures” were erected in a monastery by regime elements, including General Shwe’s family, accompanied by such this-worldly slogans as “May the throne be long established” and “Get promoted”, suggesting inverted “occult practices” on behalf of military men wanting to regain the top table of power. Outraged religious authorities ordered the yadaya AntiBuddhas be removed and given haircuts and new, less grasping hands. This was several months prior to the 2021 coup; was this true magical preparation, or merely another psy-op? This is the problem with 10 the junta constantly going yadayadayada – the population really believe in it. When soldiers leave food offerings to dark spirits beneath opposition posters or spread alarming rumours about weeping Buddha statues before elections, voters may think of the Generals not as immovable astrologers but evil necromancers, cursed by Buddha to reveal the transience of all things by losing power. In cities, giant yellow hands outside shops reveal an abundance of fortune-tellers, whose presence could turn voters renegade. In 1999, to accumulate much merit, the Generals funded renovation of Rangoon’s Shwedagon Pagoda, only for an earthquake to strike it. By opportunistically plotting another revolution for 9/9/99 as a sequel to the previous one of 8/8/88, enemies sought to capitalise on the fortuitous tremor, albeit in vain. Suu Kyi’s followers later tried calling 999 for help from Heaven by sending nine supporters to pray in nine chosen pagodas at 9am each day. Maybe this is why the temples keep collapsing. In 2009, with Suu Kyi on trial yet again, Rangoon’s 2,300-year-old Danok Pagoda toppled, only three weeks after being renovated and rededicated in the presence of Than Shwe’s wife; 20 workmen died in the collapse, a tragedy reportedly accompanied by “a bright red light” emitting “a strange haunting voice”. As pagodas shake when given offerings by evil men, astrologers perceived the very temple had “repudiated Than Shwe’s right to remain as ruler” via suicide, suggesting Buddha voted Suu Kyi. Censored media hyped the pagoda’s refurbishment, yet failed to cover its fall; but, while astrologers who dole out negative anti-junta predictions can be arrested, slippery rumour itself cannot. What other
11 institutions might also fall across Burma in 2021? One recent online forecast predicted confidently that, as protests against their latest coup spread: “The military will be brutal during this period.” You don’t need
12 the stars to tell you that.
NEXT TIME: The Elephantom Menace – mapping the occult architecture of the junta’s giant new ghost-capital, home of white elephants, Buddha’s tooth and poltergeist-repelling scorpion-buildings.