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Bushi Zhengzong · The Orthodox Tradition of Divination
Golden Counsels · The Year’s Conditions
Read in English. Switch to Original for word notes, or select text to ask a question.
The Year’s Conditions
Clear and overcast, cold and heat are regular patterns of Heaven’s Way. Flood, drought and warfare are changes in the year’s conditions. To decide blessing or calamity for a year, examine good and ill in the eight trigrams.
First examine the myriad things: they should not occupy Death or Extinction. Next examine the common people: they welcome strength and generation.
The third concerns prefectural and county officials: Brothers moving means pressing levies and taxation. The fourth concerns the Nine Ministers and chancellor: clashing with the Body means inspections and patrols without favoritism.
Reading note: The compressed 九卿相 is read as the ministers and chancellor through its administrative sequence.
The fifth is the ruler’s line; the sixth is the position of high Heaven.
Response also represents Heaven: controlling Self means Heaven’s intention is adverse. Self in turn represents Earth: meeting Void means many calamities for people and things.
The Year Ruler meeting misfortune while strong brings a great gale like Wenzhou’s. The annual influence occupying Ghost and carrying penalty brings thunder like that at the Han resting hall.
Wife and Wealth moving brings drought like the days of Cheng Tang. Parents crossing or heavy brings flooding like the time of Emperor Yao.
A fierce Fire Officer brings Huilu’s burning calamity to the places upon which it shines. Vast Water Ghost brings Xuanming’s disaster to the rivers and Huai.
Reading note: The supplied 照應 wording is rendered through the Fire clause as the places receiving its glare; no different location name is inserted.
Metal is especially feared: warfare across the four seas boils like a cauldron. Earth is still more unwelcome: epidemic afflicts a thousand households as though each matched the same tally.
Meeting Vermilion Bird and changing into a Blessing line, with Wealth moving, brings drought and locusts in succession. Meeting Gouchen at Self, with Brothers rising, brings famine after famine.
Rebellion and robbery arise from Dark Warrior occupying Officer. Many abnormal disasters arise from Soaring Snake governing Self.
Reading note: “Rebellion” reads the supplied 莽興 through the adjoining rising-robbers clause; no named rebel is introduced.
If in the Qian Palace, the heavenly drum sounds twice at the end of the Yuan.
Reading note: The supplied 元未 is read as Yuan’s end in this historical allusion; the Chinese graphic is unchanged.
If in a Zhen hexagram, thunder is exceptionally strange at the beginning of the dynasty.
Gen governs mountain collapse. At Response, it brings the five stones that fell at the Song capital.
Kun represents earthquake. Carrying penalty, it brings the collapse of two places at Huairen.
Kan changing into a Parents line rains blood, feathers and earth.
Xun with Brothers brings red winds, black winds and the wind written shi.
Reading note: The supplied final 施 remains identified as shi; no unrecorded wind phenomenon or corrected character is supplied.
Black spots arise on the sun: Song Gong is alarmed at Li’s abnormal image. A white dragon rises from a pool: Tang Xuan encounters Dui Metal’s strange transformation.
Moving in Void verifies the fraud of heavenly writings. Occupying the inner trigram must form the apparition of a dark portent.
To know in which direction Heaven’s anomaly will occur, examine the earthly branches and their allotted regions. If the Body holds Blessing and Virtue, that year must bring favorable signs.
Reading note: The supplied 休詳 is read as favorable signs in the good-year contrast.
Self receiving penalty or injury brings many frightening anomalies that year. A rich harvest and abundant year comes when Wealth and Blessing receive generation and strength without injury.
Warm winters and cool summers come when Water and Fire rest or are imprisoned without assistance.
Control and injury from another palace means foreign encroachment. The original hexagram resting or imprisoned means national decline. Yin and yang combining assures harmonious rain and wind. Brothers and Ghost both absent must mean peace for the people and security for the state.
By clearly inferring Heaven’s Way, one can know the dense array of myriad images. Penetrating the mysterious mechanism reveals far more than one year’s good or ill.
Reading note: The compact 森 wording is rendered as a dense array, without adding a missing category of images.
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