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Bushi Zhengzong · The Orthodox Tradition of Divination
Refuting Errors · Useful, Flying and Hidden Spirits
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Refuting Errors in Augmented and Revised Divination by the Changes
When a person is troubled by a matter, only divination can decide it. One must seek divination with utmost sincerity, and the spirits must announce good or ill. By carefully inferring the principles of generation, control, restraint, transformation, movement and stillness, nothing fails to be verified.
Yet Li Wenhui, in the first chapter of Augmented and Revised Divination by the Changes, says: This book has twelve secret methods, teaching only people who know absolutely nothing of the Five Phases' generation and control. They need not read divination books; they need only learn to cast a hexagram to judge good and ill. They will know success or failure in rank and reputation, gains or losses of possessions, life or death in illness, and how to approach blessing or avoid calamity. In all these matters, they can judge without reading divination books. These are the secret methods with which my teacher, Old Man He, labored for the world's benefit; ten thousand taels of gold cannot obtain them anywhere. Such are his words.
Reading note: The teacher is named 鶴老人, Old Man He, in this quotation; the later Wild Crane name is not silently inserted.
Reading his secret method, it says: In seeking reputation, use the Officer line as Useful Spirit and Descendants as Avoided Spirit. Do not read divination books or examine generation, control, restraint, transformation, movement, stillness, clash or combination. Merely learn to assign the hexagram and pray to the spirits: If I am to have rank and reputation, please grant an Officer line holding Self.
Cast a hexagram. If the Officer line does not occupy Self, cast again. If there is still none, cast again, or cast again tomorrow. If Officer holds Self, one knows for certain that there will be reputation; if Descendants hold Self, one knows for certain that there will be none.
In seeking wealth, Wealth holding Self means one will obtain it; Brothers holding Self means one will not.
In divining about illness, a Useful Spirit holding Self means life; an Avoided Spirit holding Self means death.
In every divination, they judge a Useful Spirit holding Self favorable and an Avoided Spirit holding Self unfavorable. If neither holds Self, one must continue casting until one appears.
I consider Li Wenhui foolish. Why not pray while casting divining blocks and judge good or ill from sacred, yin and yang responses? That would be an even quicker method. Would people who cast those blocks now not be worth ten thousand times ten thousand taels of gold?
In sum, Li Wenhui insults the sages' Changes and misleads the path of later generations. Therefore I refute him.
Reading note: 笤 is read as the divining blocks identified by the passage's sacred/yin/yang responses. The source character and the exaggerated gold amounts are not changed.
Refuting Hidden-Spirit Errors in Supplement to the Forest of Changes
When the Useful Spirit does not appear in a hexagram, inspect the changed lines. If it is there, there is no need to seek a Hidden Spirit. If it is absent there too, only then find beneath which line it is hidden and see whether it can be drawn forth. Determine good or ill from whether it can be drawn forth, and nothing fails to be verified.
For example, Kun as Earth in the Kun Palace has all five categories in its six lines. If the Useful line is in Cycle Void, Month Break, penalty, clash, control or harm, judge good or ill from the affliction of that very line.
For Fu, Lin, Tai, Da Zhuang, Guai, Xu and Bi, if neither the original nor changed hexagram has the Useful Spirit, take the Useful Spirit from Kun as Earth and hide it beneath a certain line of the current hexagram. This method is fixed and unchanging for all ages. How could it be like Zhang Xingyuan's general judgment in Supplement to the Forest of Changes, which says:
Flying and Hidden exchange within the Two Modes:
yang must be hidden beneath yin, and yin beneath yang.
Qian and Kun come and go and exchange;
seek Zhen and Xun on the two sides;
Gen and Dui draw from each other;
Kan and Li pass the flow in turn.
How could such words be the method?
According to his method, Heaven over Wind, Gou, provides the Hidden Spirits for Earth over Thunder, Fu. He does not know that Fu lacks the documents, or Parents, line. One should take Si Fire documents, the second line of Kun, the first hexagram of its own palace, and hide it beneath Yin Wood, Fu's second line. Yin Wood is Flying and Si Fire is Hidden: this is called the Flying coming to generate the Hidden. In divinations about documents or elders, the response has repeatedly occurred on a Si day.
If, following Zhang Xingyuan, one takes Gou as Fu's Hidden and places Wu Fire, Gou's fourth line, beneath Chou Earth, Fu's fourth line, one recklessly declares Wu Fire hidden beneath draining Chou Earth unfavorable, instead of declaring Si Fire hidden beneath its Birth stage favorable.
Again, Heaven over Mountain, Dun, lacks Descendants. One must hide Zi Water Descendants, Qian's first line, beneath Chen Earth, Dun's first line. Water's Storehouse is at Chen: this is called entering the Tomb at the Flying line. If it can be drawn forth, it is favorable; if it cannot, unfavorable. This too is an unchanging method for all ages.
Yet Zhang Xingyuan takes Gui-Hai Water, the fifth line of Earth over Lake, Lin, and hides it beneath Shen Metal, Dun's fifth line. He then says: The Useful Spirit hidden beneath its Birth stage is favorable. This drags in one person in place of another and recklessly judges good or ill.
He also says that if the Useful Spirit appears in the hexagram but encounters Cycle Void, Month Break, penalty, clash, control or harm, one should seek a Hidden Spirit. He also says that Returning Soul hexagrams all use their palace's fourth hexagram as Hidden. For example, when Zi Water Descendants, Da You's first line, is in Cycle Void, he takes Heaven over Earth, Pi, as Hidden. But none of Pi's six lines contains Descendants. Is the appearing line's Cycle Void still unfavorable, or does the Hidden hexagram's lack of a Useful Spirit mean neither good nor ill? I briefly refute one or two of his Hidden-Spirit errors to show later students.
Reading note: The compressed 為巳取坤 wording is read through the named Kun second line, Si Fire. All specified hexagrams, line numbers, branches and alternatives remain.
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