Definition of Fate and Fortune (命運)

In most fortune-telling systems, there are two elements interacting with each other -- which I term "Fate" and "Fortune".  As will be discussed in future articles, it is a strange fact that fate and fortune usually follow the exact same mathematical laws -- something which should not be reasonably expected.

Fate (命)

Something akin to destiny -- it encapsulates a person's nature based on the time of birth, which manifests as fixed natural tendencies with a mathematically-predictable bias throughout that person's life.

Fortune (運)

Tied to the time of birth again, it represents a time-changing force that acts upon a person's fate.  The interactions between fate and fortune creates various influences time, some favorable some unfavorable, towards particular aspects of that person's life.

Whilst a person's fate is unchanged, fortune changes with time -- thus a dynamical system.  The dynamics of fortune are mathematically predictable, so are the interactions between fate and fortune.

A particular note to make is that some fortune-telling systems (e.g. Bagua 八卦 from the I-Ching, Feng Shui etc.) appear to work exclusively on fortune -- Bagua to predict it, Feng Shui to change it respectively.