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Preface

Overall Paraphrase

The principle of divination is none other than discerning matters beforehand. 🔮

The Zhou dynasty divined the fortunes of the state and learned that it would pass through thirty generations of rulers and enjoy eight hundred years of dominion—this stands as clear evidence of the Zhou era's capacity for foreknowledge.

In the Han dynasty, Yan Junping daily cast fortunes for several clients in the marketplace, collecting a hundred coins to sustain himself, and in his leisure hours lectured on the Laozi in his stall—this is a model of foreknowledge from the Han era.

In the Three Kingdoms period, Wu Fan earnestly urged Sun Quan to raise troops, which ultimately led to the capture of Huang Zu—this is a testament to foreknowledge in the Wu region.

In the Jin dynasty, Guo Pu received the Qingnang Jing (Green Satchel Classic) and gained profound insight into the pivotal mechanisms of yin and yang. Chunyu Zhi instructed Xiaohou Zao to wail bitterly outside his family gate, drawing the entire household out to investigate—whereupon the house collapsed, yet no one perished. The Jin dynasty indeed boasted numerous masters of foreknowledge.

A certain Yan consulted the hexagrams regarding a woman's childbirth. The hexagram text read: "Climbing high, two waters in motion; only voices heard, forms unseen." The woman explained: "Yesterday, while drawing water from the well, I heard a sound within the womb." The divination proved accurate.

A certain Guo, divining for Zhou De of Hezhongzheng, obtained a three-character poetic prophecy: "[ ] when the moon is full, a banner dipped in [ ]." At the time, Zhongzheng had just passed the imperial examinations. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, he was indeed appointed Edict Drafter, and subsequently reassigned to Qinzhou. The Wei and Jin era was not lacking in those gifted with foreknowledge.

In the Tang dynasty, Li Chunfeng observed a red horse and a black horse entering a river, and someone asked which horse would rise first. Another person divined and obtained the Li (Fire) hexagram, saying: "Li represents fire; fire is red in color, so the red horse should rise first." Li Chunfeng countered: "Not necessarily—before flames rise, smoke ascends first. The black horse should rise first." Verification confirmed that the black horse rose first.

In the Song dynasty, Shao Kangjie observed the peonies in a friend's garden and divined that the flowers would be destroyed at the hour of noon. Shortly thereafter, a horse broke loose and charged into the garden, trampling and destroying many peonies. Both the Tang and Song dynasties possessed remarkable masters of foreknowledge.

Fan Chou and Tang Tongxuan of the Yuan dynasty, and Zhai Xiang, Shen Jingyi, and Zhou Zhonggao of the present dynasty—all possessed the capacity for foreknowledge.

✍️ Yao Fu, Master Baiyu, compiled the Complete Book of Divination, taking the Jing Fang system of Yi interpretation as its main framework and the Qingnang Jing as its supporting text—a work of supreme refinement. It elucidates the most abstruse principles with remarkable clarity, deriving the simplest and most accessible applications from the most profound and subtle foundations.

To study this work with dedication is to bring the universe to life within one's breast and set creation in motion at one's fingertips ⚡. Its counsel for the world is comprehensive—meticulous and complete. Unless one were versed in examining antiquity to verify the present, inferring this from that, and knowing the future through the past, who could attain such mastery?

It is certain that Master Baiyu's reputation and discernment will stand alongside Yan Junping, Guo Pu, and the other great masters. His writings will be transmitted and celebrated together with treasured volumes and golden-bound celestial texts. His conduct will unite him with recluses of high attainment, promoting the Great Way, aiding the times, silently benefiting the world—equally imperishable.

📜 The book has now been sent to print. I only fear that amid thunder, rain, clouds, and mist, the Six Ding Spirits of the upper realm may be dispatched to claim this work. Even if the elder of Qingqiu does not keep it secret, those who seek Master Baiyu's book into their twilight years—should they, like Mr. Kui who encountered a transcendent master, or like Yuan who received a precious mirror from an extraordinary person—will experience and comprehend the truth that "utmost sincerity is as spirit." I thus compose this preface.

Summer, the sixteenth day of the fourth month, in the year gengwu of the Chongzhen reign (1630), written by Gu Zongmeng of Dongwu, at the Orchid Jade Residence.

[Translator's note: The original is a cursive-script manuscript with some illegible characters marked [ ]; certain words and phrases have been inferred from context for completeness.]

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🧠 Deep Understanding

Core Concept 💡

The central thrust of this preface lies in establishing the legitimacy and historical lineage of divination as an art of "foreknowledge." By enumerating celebrated verified cases from the Zhou dynasty through the Ming dynasty, Gu Zongmeng constructs a continuous genealogy of the foreknowledge tradition: Zhou dynastic oracle → Yan Junping of the Han → Wu Fan of the Three Kingdoms → Guo Pu and Chunyu Zhi of the Jin → Li Chunfeng of the Tang → Shao Kangjie of the Song → the masters of the Yuan and Ming dynasties.

Its core logic operates on three levels:

Modern Interpretation 🌟

On the surface a preface, this text is in essence an early intellectual history of "predictive big data." Figures such as Yan Junping, Li Chunfeng, and Shao Kangjie played social roles remarkably similar to today's strategy analysts and risk-assessment consultants.

Noteworthy modern correspondences:

• The Yan Junping model: Supporting oneself through divination while teaching philosophy—analogous to today's consultant-cum-public intellectual, combining technical predictive work with humanistic education.
• Li Chunfeng's Li-hexagram case: From the surface inference of "Li = fire → red," to the deeper correction of "smoke precedes fire → black rises first"—this represents an upgrade from surface-level models to deep mechanistic analysis 🧠.
• Shao Kangjie's contemplation of peonies: Inferring event trajectories from the subtle state of a single flower—conceptually akin to sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory and the butterfly effect 🦋.

Practical Value ⚡

Suggested modern applications:

1. Decision-support framework: Translate divinatory conclusions into a "hypothesis-action-review" methodology. For example, Li Chunfeng's judgment on which horse rose first was not ultimately about "black vs. red"—it was about not lingering on surface markers, but tracing the causal sequence of events.

2. Risk-assessment checklist:

   • When a divinatory reading points toward an outcome, list possible contributing factors (e.g., the attributes of "fire" are not singular)
   • Distinguish direct vs. indirect causal factors (red → fire → direct; smoke → precursor → indirect precedence)
   • Set verification nodes (as with the precisely timed peony-destruction at the noon hour)

3. The "hundred coins" self-sustenance model: Suggests professional knowledge services should establish boundaries and sustainable business models—neither debasing one's craft nor seeking excessive profit.

Philosophical Reflection 🤔

The preface implicitly engages a profound philosophical question: Is foreknowledge possible? And if so, where do its boundaries lie?

Gu Zongmeng's answer is embedded in the phrase "the most profound subtleties fully grasped give rise to the most simple applications"—the deepest laws (profound mystery), once fully mastered, present themselves in the most economical form. This mirrors modern physics' pursuit of a unified field theory, an elegant equation that explains the universe 🔬.

Equally thought-provoking is the closing invocation of "utmost sincerity operates as spirit"—the efficacy of divination stems not from external supernatural forces but from the practitioner's consummate sincerity. This implies that the power of foreknowledge is intimately tied to the subject's moral cultivation and depth of focus—which in contemporary terms might be rendered: the quality of one's judgment is positively correlated with the sincerity and depth of one's engagement.

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📚 Related Knowledge

Associated Concepts

• Jing Fang Yi: The nayin (stem-branch) divination system founded by Jing Fang of the Western Han, integrating the heavenly stems, earthly branches, and Five Phases into hexagram lines. This forms the methodological core of the Complete Book of Divination. Its essence lies in assigning stems and branches to the sixty-four hexagrams, determining rising and declining energies by monthly milestones and solar stems, and assessing affairs through six relations and six spirits.
• Qingnang Jing (Green Satchel Classic): A geomancy (fengshui) classic traditionally said to have been transmitted from the Yellow Stone Elder to Zhang Liang upon the latter's deathbed. Guo Pu later acquired it and thereby mastered the principles of yin-yang geography. It functions as the supplementary text in the Complete Book of Divination system.
• Plum Blossom Divination: The celebrated case from Shao Yong's Plum Blossom Numerological Divination, in which the peonies being trampled by a horse served as the divinatory catalyst—linked to the narrative in this preface. The method's core lies in generating hexagrams from images and judging by principle.
• Li Hexagram: The thirtieth hexagram of the Book of Changes, symbolizing fire, radiance, and attachment. In the red-and-black horse divination example, the diviner drew upon the surface correspondence "Li = fire → red," whereas Li Chunfeng further deduced the causal sequence "before fire arises, smoke ascends first."

Further Reading

• Zhou Yi, Xici Zhuan: "Exhaust the numbers to know the future—this is called divination; understand transformation—this is called affairs of the world"—the methodological root of the foreknowledge tradition narrated here.
• The original Plum Blossom text on Shao Kangjie's contemplation of the peonies—the precise procedures for generating hexagrams from dynamic phenomena.
• Jing Fang's Yi Zhuan: To understand the structural conventions and formal organization of the Complete Book of Divination built upon Jing Fang's Yi.
• Hou Han Shu, Fangshu Liezhuan: The original historical records of Yan Junping, Wu Fan, and others.
• Jin Shu, Guo Pu Zhuan: The biographical account of Guo Pu receiving the Qingnang traditions and mastering yin-yang cosmology.

Modern Scholarship

• Divination and decision psychology: Contemporary cognitive science research on judgment and prediction finds that expert intuition can in limited domains achieve above-chance accuracy, provided the domain features stable causal structures and rich feedback loops for learning—consistent with the long-term practice of masters celebrated in this preface.
• Complex systems theory: Shao Kangjie's inference of a specific time window ("noon hour") from botanical signs bears conceptual resemblance to critical-state identification in complexity science—detecting imminent regime shifts through micro-precursor signals.
• History of Chinese occult arts scholarship: Modern academic studies of the Complete Book of Divination typically characterize it as the comprehensive apex of Ming-dynasty Jing Fang divination, reflecting broader late-imperial tendencies toward "compiling extensively, deploying simply" in mantle culture.