Ancient Chinese Divination: Chinese Secular Studies

Author: Hong Pimu, Jiang Yuzhen
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-10-01
Features: Are you interested in divination? Do you want to know when divination started? Do you know how fortune-tellers arrange the Eight Characters? What is the relationship between the twelve effective days and the Earthly Branches? Did the ancients believe in divination? By reading this book, you will learn much about the ancient Chinese divination. In ancient times, when human productivity was extremely underdeveloped and awareness levels were extremely low, due to the inability to explain mysterious natural phenomena and fully grasp their own fortune and longevity, a thought emerged that there was an irresistible mysterious force from heaven that dominated everything in the world and arranged everything in the human world. This way of thinking is the "Heaven" that can determine human fate and decide human destiny or fate recorded in ancient literature after entering the hierarchical society. In terms of the "Yi Jing," it is called "The (qian) Way changes, each rectifies their destiny." For the "life" here, later scholars (zhùshì) explained: "Life means what a person is endowed with, such as nobility, poverty, early death, and longevity." From the unearthed oracle bone inscriptions and inscriptions on ritual vessels, the phrase "Receiving orders from heaven" appeared more than once, indicating that the concept of "Heaven's will" had already taken root in the minds of some people as early as the Shang and Zhou periods. Later, Confucianism's founding master, Confucius, was an old scholar who deeply believed in fate. In theory, Confucius was a knowledgeable and wise scholar with a profound understanding of human society, so how could he believe in fate? In fact, he had traveled extensively in his early years, promoting his political ideas in various states, hoping to achieve something great. However, when he encountered repeated failures later, he deeply realized that the god of fate was indeed powerful. But by then, he was already in his fifties. "At fifty, one knows the will of heaven" is the best explanation for his transformation from not knowing fate to knowing fate. At the same time, he not only "knew fate" but was also afraid of it, otherwise, he would not have said, "Fear the will of heaven." Interestingly, in addition to knowing and fearing his own fate, he and his disciples vigorously promoted the ideas of "Life and death are fate, wealth and status are in heaven," "Without knowing fate, one cannot be a gentleman," and "A gentleman stays calm and waits for fate, while a petty person takes risks and hopes for good fortune." Here, his teaching is that a person's life, death, poverty, and wealth are all predetermined by fate. As a gentleman, one must "know fate" to qualify as a gentleman. Because gentlemen are "aware of fate," they can be content and obey heaven's arrangement, but petty people are not like that. They refuse to follow fate and often take risks, hoping to get a good outcome by chance. Of course, when looking at things, one should not focus on one aspect and ignore the rest. The "Collected Sayings of Confucius" records Confucius saying, "Ancient sages and gentlemen are knowledgeable and deeply (móu) plan, but most of them do not meet with success. Is it only me (Confucius) who is like this? The talented and the mediocre are about talent, the doers and the non-doers are about people, the good and bad of opportunities are about time, and life and death are about fate." Here, he believed that the talented and the mediocre are distinguished by talent, the doers and the non-doers are about people, and whether one meets with success or failure is about time, while life and death are about fate. It can be seen that while advocating obedience to the will of heaven, he also advocated giving full play to human subjective initiative. Because talent and effort are one thing, and circumstances and the arrangement of life and death are another. As the founder of the Confucian school, Confucius's concept of fate was reflected in the new thoughts of Mencius, the great scholar of Confucianism. In the first part of "Mencius · Wan Zhang," it is said, "Things that are not done by others but happen anyway are the work of heaven"