Loading...
Chapter 3 of 12
易林补遗
The Yilin Bu Yi (Supplement to the Forest of Changes) is a monumental work on Yijing divination written by Zhang Shibao, a formally credentialed divination master of the Ministry of Rites during the Ming Dynasty. This book employs a unique operational mechanism and a complete divination methodology to incorporate various social affairs—politics, economics, military matters, personnel affairs, marriage, agriculture, trade, and more—into the divination system, providing detailed explanations item by item. The work is comprehensive, systematic, and rigorous in its structure, and is widely regarded as a first-rate treatise on prognostic divination. It has long been praised by students of the Yijing and highly esteemed by divination scholars. However, due to successive hand-copying and transmission, it also suffered the fate of being circulated beyond China's borders. Most of the versions that came down through history have already deviated from the original text, rendering it almost unrecognizable. In order to enable more people to understand, study, research, and apply Yijing divination—and to prevent corrupted copies from perpetuating errors and misleading future learners—the modern renowned physiognomy and destiny scholar Bai Baoquan, inventor and creator of the Bagua Prediction Instrument and author of Mingli Jiezhen (Insights into Destiny Analysis), Lunming Mifa (Secret Methods of Destiny Discourse), Zeng Bu Shi Li Shangxi (Appreciation of Supplementary Divination Cases), Shimen Yi Bu (Shimen's Yijing Divination), Liuren Rumen (Introduction to Liu Ren), and Mingli Shiyi (Clarifying Doubts on Destiny Analysis), joined forces with Li Yao, collator and editor of Yi Mao (The Book of Changes Unveiled) and author of Zoujin Qimen (Entering the Qimen Dunjia), to meticulously edit, annotate, and reconstruct The Yilin Bu Yi. The purpose behind this endeavor is to lift the mysterious veil surrounding Yijing divination and to point out to people: Yi divination operates according to definite computational rules and predictive methods, and represents a complex information-engineering system. As long as we approach it with a proper attitude—conducting scientific research and exploration rather than blind superstition—we will surely be able to unravel the mystery of Yijing divination, aligning traditional cultural knowledge with modern civilization for the benefit of humanity.
[Translator's note: In the phrase "流本己多易其貌," the character "己" is likely a scribal error for "已" (meaning "already"), indicating that most circulating versions have already altered the original appearance.]
This foreword articulates a key stance: Yijing divination is not an arcane and unfathomable esoteric discourse, but rather a rule-based, operable, and systematic system of prognostic computation. The range of domains it covers—politics, economics, military affairs, personnel, marriage, agriculture, trade, and more—demonstrates that ancient people treated divination as an "information-processing tool" rather than mere superstition. The text's emphasis on the concept of a "complex information engineering" framework places Yijing divination within a rational epistemological rubric: it is a method of projecting and inferring the state of affairs through a symbolic system based on yin-yang, the Five Phases, Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, and hexagram imagery, governed by specific computable rules.
From a contemporary perspective, the core message of this passage is to vindicate the legitimacy of the Yijing: divination is not superstition but rather a classical decision-support system with logical structure and causal mechanisms. Its essence lies in transforming complex real-world problems into a symbolic model, then deriving judgments and recommendations through rule-based inference. This approach is conceptually analogous to modern management-science methods such as decision trees, risk assessment, and systems analysis.
It is worth noting that the text simultaneously affirms the academic value of Yijing divination while explicitly calling for the "elimination of superstition"—an orientation that was remarkably farsighted for its time. It suggests that what matters most in studying divination is grasping its symbolic logic and inferential rules, not blindly trusting its outputs.
In contemporary life, this divination system can serve as a complementary cognitive tool for decision-making. For example:
The key to this approach is to treat the hexagrams as a mirror that reflects aspects of thinking that might otherwise be missed, rather than as an immutable verdict of fate.
Beneath this text lies a profound philosophical proposition: Is there a describable, rule-governed correlation among all phenomena in the cosmos? The legitimacy of Yijing divination rests on the philosophical foundations of "the unity of Heaven and humanity" and "categorical correspondence by analogy" (wanwu leixiang)—the belief that the governing principles of the natural world are structurally isomorphic with those of human affairs, and that this correspondence can be modeled and extrapolated through a symbolic system. Although this mode of thinking differs from the causal-empirical logic of modern science, it offers a classical paradigm of holistic and relational thinking that has heuristic value for understanding nonlinear relationships, emergence, and systemic complexity.
At the same time, the text's call to "align traditional cultural knowledge with modern civilization" points to a practical challenge: how to establish an constructive dialogue between scientific rationality and traditional culture—neither blanket rejection nor blind credulity.
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Divination (shi fa) | A prognostic method involving yarrow stalks, copper coins, or other tools to cast hexagrams and derive readings based on hexagram images, line texts, and the interactions of the Five Phases |
| Najia divination | A system that incorporates Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches into hexagram lines for judgment; this is the core methodology of The Yilin Bu Yi |
| Bagua Prediction Instrument | A divination tool invented by Bai Baoquan that seeks to formalize and instrumentalize traditional divination methods |
| Categorical correspondence (wanwu leixiang) | The foundational Yijing principle of "classifying all things by image," mapping worldly phenomena into the eight trigrams and Five Phases system for inference |
Contemporary scholarship on Yijing divination clusters around three main directions: first, analysis of the encoding and inferential structure of the hexagram and line system through semiotics and information theory; second, investigation of the decision-support function and psychological mechanisms of divination activity through cognitive science; and third, examination of the historical evolution and social functions of divination at various periods through cultural history. These research strands offer a new scholarly positioning for traditional divination—it is neither a purely superstitious practice nor a predictive technology in the modern scientific sense, but rather a classical approach to systematic thinking and a cultural tradition of decision-making.