Layout: First piece with eight to nine columns per page; 24 characters per individual column, grouped in sets of two. Second piece with columns numbered 2-5, but not grouped in sets. First piece is a single long sheet, folded accordion-style and pasted to form a codex-style binding with distinct leaves of text. Second piece is a fragment of a single sheet, folded once. First line: 並：出自北门，雨雪霏霏；連天古渡，老翁方争；舟楫未具，昂步難度。 Provenance: Purchased from Heritage Auctions, October 2014. This manuscript contains two separate pieces. In the first piece, characters of larger fonts are situated at the top and the middle of the page, indicating the subjects of divination, such as Disease, Pursuit, Marriage, Family, etc. The actual text of divination falls under the subject in phrases of four characters, entailing a poetry-like rhythm. The content of text was designed to be ambiguous with multiple ways of interpretation, and is thus filled with motifs and representations that may seem to be irrelevant in the first place. For instance, in one column indicating disease, it reads: “With Mountain Yuan standing erected, where to seek for the running deer (in Chinese culture a deer is usually seen as a symbol of health, prosperity and longevity); the five visceras are all sided, by which food digest is impeded; if you seek for the cure, the southern realm of fire it is (the southern realm of fire refers to a specific combination of the month, date and hour of one’s birth). The second piece uses the notion of Bagua and Wuxing, two fundamental symbolic systems in Taoist cosmology that respectively consist of eight symbols and five elements, to explain the mystic connection between a residence’s features, such as location, design and size, and one’s fate.
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