ancient china, chinese folklore, cultural stories, divination, faith and humility, historical tales, li chushi, redemption, supernatural phenomena, tang dynasty

Chinese Folklore: Li Chushi’s Divination

According to Tang Que Shi, during the reign of Emperor De Zong of the Tang Dynasty, there was an official named Li Ao whose radical and straightforward character led to his offending Prime Minister Li Fengji. Consequently, Li Ao was demoted from the central Department of State Affairs and sent to a remote region, Luzhou, ...

Mikel Davis

3D rendering of the Yin-Yang symbol contained within a glass sphere.

Jing Fang: Worldly Skill Without Spiritual Development Leads to His Downfall

Jing Fang (77-37 BC) was a master of Yixue (易学, “the study of changes”), skilled in using celestial phenomena to predict human affairs. He was the founder of divination methods using the six lines and eight trigrams. However, despite being a pioneer in the field, he ultimately fell victim to his own predictive abilities. Why ...

Max Lu

Close-up of an I Ching hexagram.

Miraculous Efficacy of Ancient Chinese Medicine

Chinese culture has endured for the past 5,000 years and traditional Chinese medicine has always been an inseparable part of it. Modern-day people, especially the younger generation, often perceive this ancient Chinese medicine to be somewhat unsophisticated and less advanced than present-day pharmaceutical medicinal practices. Ancient practitioners of Chinese medicine often left detailed records of ...

Emma Lu

An illustration of ancient Chinese doctor, Li Shizhen.

Ancient Chinese Mathematicians With the Power of Divination (Part 2)

In the first part of this article, we encountered mathematician Zhao Da’s magical ability to use arithmetic to deduce and derive “impossible” hidden factors and their quantity down to the tiniest number. Looking into more accounts and records, we can feel that the ancients, particularly before the Song Dynasty, regarded mathematics as we know it ...

Michael Segarty

Moon phases and the lunar cycle in the night sky.

Divination for 2021: Danger at the End of the Gengzi Cycle

According to the Chinese calendar, a full cycle is completed once every 600 years. The end of the lunar year that began in 2020 marks the completion of one of these cycles, which is known as the Gengzi cycle. This time was predicted to bring chaos and upheaval to the world. As the current Chinese ...

Emma Lu

A depiction of outerspace with an opening to Heaven that shines a beam of light down on the Earth.