Bushi Zhengzong · The Orthodox Tradition of Divination

Maxims on Divination

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Maxims on Divination The way of divination communicates with spirits and numinous powers. It judges good and ill, resolves anxieties and doubts, distinguishes yin and yang in line images, and examines the mysterious workings of transformation. Its meaning is most refined and its undertaking most weighty. The sacred classic says, “The Way of utmost sincerity can know beforehand.” Thus the questioner who is not sincere does not reach the spirits, and the interpreter who judges recklessly has no efficacy. These two statements are indeed settled conclusions. I often see worldly people consult divination whenever an affair arises, yet remain unaware of the single word sincerity. Some drink wine and eat pungent or meat foods; some engage in illicit sexual conduct and impurity. Then, at the moment of praying, they want to move and reach the spirits. Is this not delusion? Moreover, wealthy and honored people treat divination lightly. They entrust a relative or friend, or send a servant, without personally offering their sincere feeling. Thus their question receives no response and the divination proves ineffective. They shift the blame to diviners, without knowing that their own sincerity has not reached the point. This is the questioner's fault. As for diviners, some harbor love of profit and use divination as bait. Illness, for example, is among the gravest matters for a questioner. Yet there are people without conscience who collude with monks, nuns, and Daoist establishments, agreeing on annual payments, festival gifts, and routine divisions of three to seven or two to eight. They make reckless judgments for profit. Their prescriptions vary in quantity according to the questioner's wealth or poverty. Recklessly they prescribe so many penitential services at one monastery or temple, so many days of scripture recitation at another shrine or convent. Alarmed and confused, questioners obey everything. Wealthy people can still readily pay, but the poor pawn clothes, borrow money, give up property, and sell possessions. For a time they suffer with nowhere to turn, hoping that a particular illness may be cured. In the end, before the penitential services are finished, the patient is dead; just as the scripture recitation ends, the patient dies. What benefit is there? This is the harm of collusion with monks and Daoists. There are also novice physicians who do not yet understand pulse principles. They request referrals. When someone consults divination about a physician, the diviner directs the prayer toward a named person's address and recommends that person. The diviner's gain is merely a small annual payment or festival gift, yet the patient suddenly suffers the harm of being killed by an incompetent physician. This is the calamity of collusion with physicians. These two corrupt customs occur throughout prefectural cities everywhere. When I hung my curtain at Weiqian, people of this kind came to entice me. I swore to reject them. I judged every case carefully according to its hexagram, and none failed to respond. This was not refinement in my study of divination, but simply the absence of the error of reckless judgment. Now, fortunately having gained a little in learning, I have compiled Bushi Zhengzong and ask instruction from the clear-sighted. Yet I still fear the error of questioners being insincere and failing to reach the spirits, and the harm of interpreters making mistaken judgments that prove ineffective. Therefore I record this at the beginning. Reading note: The opening has the anomalous 未卜之为道; the English follows the surrounding discussion of divination without adding a separate doctrine of “not divining.” The three-to-seven and two-to-eight divisions are retained without assigning either share to a particular party.

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