🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦So I've grown weary of Wuhan's weather mocking me with sunny weeks but gloomy weekends that prevent me from taking good photos of tea. Today I'm going to instead offer pictures of divination systems, containing two major schools of divination: 求签筒 (qiú qiān tǒng or "fortune-seeking cylinder", sometimes called "casting lots') and the venerable 易经 (Yìjīng or "Book of Changes", a.k.a. I-Ching).
The 签筒 are typically bamboo cups with 100 inscribed bamboo slips with a number. You shake the cup until one slip falls out, that slip being your fortune. The number is a key to a fortune, read like astrology readings (i.e. vague and nigh-universal in application) which you can read yourself or get a priest to interpret. These can be found in Buddhist and Daoist temples (the latter often having 64 slips instead to index into the 易经 instead). The slips also have one of four general, overall ratings on them: 上上签，上签，中签，下签 meaning very good, good, average, or bad fortune respectively for a quick consultation. This will become important as you will see in the alt text.
The second part contains little metal imprints of the 易经, the third containing 易经 cards, the fourth containing photos of 易经 dice and coins. All of the 易经 materials are placed alongside extra printed material for full impact.
The 易经 is taken very seriously in China; it is the oldest systematic work of philosophy (albeit an unusually opaque one since the oral culture that spawned it and informed it is long lost and can only be pieced together in snippets). It is within its pages and system of hexagrams that you can find the roots of Daoism, of Confucianism, and also a deep influence on Chinese (and sinosphere in general) Buddhism. Which is why there are so many ways it is used (of which today's photo-essay is a small sampling!).
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Details in alt text, as usual, and Mastodon users will have to click through to see all photos.
#求签筒 #易经 #CastingLots #Yijing #IChing #ChineseCulture
@[email protected]
The 签筒 are typically bamboo cups with 100 inscribed bamboo slips with a number. You shake the cup until one slip falls out, that slip being your fortune. The number is a key to a fortune, read like astrology readings (i.e. vague and nigh-universal in application) which you can read yourself or get a priest to interpret. These can be found in Buddhist and Daoist temples (the latter often having 64 slips instead to index into the 易经 instead). The slips also have one of four general, overall ratings on them: 上上签，上签，中签，下签 meaning very good, good, average, or bad fortune respectively for a quick consultation. This will become important as you will see in the alt text.
The second part contains little metal imprints of the 易经, the third containing 易经 cards, the fourth containing photos of 易经 dice and coins. All of the 易经 materials are placed alongside extra printed material for full impact.
The 易经 is taken very seriously in China; it is the oldest systematic work of philosophy (albeit an unusually opaque one since the oral culture that spawned it and informed it is long lost and can only be pieced together in snippets). It is within its pages and system of hexagrams that you can find the roots of Daoism, of Confucianism, and also a deep influence on Chinese (and sinosphere in general) Buddhism. Which is why there are so many ways it is used (of which today's photo-essay is a small sampling!).
---
Details in alt text, as usual, and Mastodon users will have to click through to see all photos.
#求签筒 #易经 #CastingLots #Yijing #IChing #ChineseCulture
@[email protected]
