Stalk Divination

C. A. Cook, Zhao Lu

This book presents for the first time a full translation and analysis of a newly discovered bamboo divination manual from the fourth century BCE China, called the *Stalk Divination Method (Shifa)*. It was used as an alternative to the better-known *Zhouyi* (popularly known as the *I-Ching*). The *Shifa* manual presents a competing method of interpreting the trigrams, the most basic elements of the distinctive sixty-four hexagrams in the *Zhouyi*. This newly discovered method looks at the combination of four trigrams as a fluid, changeable pattern or unit reflective of different circumstances in an elite man's life. Unlike the *Zhouyi*, this new manual provides case studies that explain how to read the trigram patterns for different topics. This method is unprecedented in early China and has left no trace in later Chinese divination traditions. *Shifa* must be understood then as a...