Fortune-telling and divination Books

Book SynopsisIn Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body, Xing Wang investigates the intellectual and technical contexts in which the knowledge of physiognomy (xiangshu) was produced and transformed in Ming China (1368-1644 C.E.). Known as a fortune-telling technique via examining the human body and material objects, Xing Wang shows how the construction of the physiognomic body in many Ming texts represent a unique, unprecedented ‘somatic cosmology’. Applying an anthropological reading to these texts and providing detailed analysis of this technique, the author proves that this physiognomic cosmology in Ming China emerged as a part of a new body discourse which differs from the modern scholarly discourse on the body.Trade Review"This volume would be of immense use to those interested in Chinese religion. On a much broader level, this volume has the potential to be of immense use to those interested in general divination practices. In Wang’s own words, the understanding one will gain from this volume will “allow us to re- examine other kinds of techniques that have existed in different religions and social communities, as well as look at how religion, divination, and popular cultivation are techniques central to human life.” – Joseph Chadwin, University of Vienna, Religious Studies Review 47/3 (2021).

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Book SynopsisIn times of crises, be it about climate change, the pandemic corona virus, or democratic struggles, there is an unwaning interest worldwide in the end of times and related themes such as apocalypticism, messianism, and utopianism. This concerns scholarship and society alike, and is by no means limited to the religious field. The present volume collates essays from specialists in the study of apocalyptic and eschatological subjects. With its interdisciplinary approach, it is designed to overcome the existing Euro-centrism and incorporate a broader perspective to the topic of end time expectations in the Christian Middle Ages as well as in East Asia and Africa. Contributors include: Gaelle Bosseman, Wolfram Brandes, Matthias Gebauer, Jürgen Gebhardt, Vincent Goossaert, Klaus Herbers, Matthias Kaup, Bernardo Bertholin Kerr, Thomas Krümpel, Richard Landes, Zhao Lu, Rolf Scheuermann, and Julia Eva Wannenmacher.Table of ContentsList of Figures and Tables The End(s) of Time(s): An Introduction  Hans-Christian Lehner Part 1 1 Christian Perspectives on History, Eschatology, and Transcendence in the Latin Christian Middle Ages  Klaus Herbers 2 Byzantine Predictions of the End of the World in 500, 1000, and 1492 AD  Wolfram Brandes 3 The Great Peace and the Ends of Time in Early Imperial China  Zhao Lu 4 Tibetan Buddhist Dystopian Narratives and their Pedagogical Dimensions  Rolf Scheuermann 5 Ragnarök: Prophecies and Notions of the End Time in Old Norse Religion  Thomas Krümpel 6 An Overview of Bahá’í Eschatology, in a Tapestry of Five Strands  Bernardo Bertholin Kerr Part 2 7 Beatus of Liebana and the Spiritualized Understanding of Apocalypse in Medieval Iberia  Gaelle Bosseman 8 Muhammad, Mahdi, Antichrist: Muslims in Joachim of Fiore’s Apocalyptic Eschatology  Julia Eva Wannenmacher 9 The Infernal Trinity as Passivized Pacemaker of Salvation History: Satan’s Particular Eschatological Activity in Anonymus Bambergensis’ Tracts De semine scripturarum and De principe mundi  Matthias Kaup Part 3 10 Competing Eschatological Scenarios during the Taiping War, 1851–1864  Vincent Goossaert 11 The Messianic Quest for an Earthly Paradise in the Modern Era of Revolution  Jürgen Gebhardt 12 Indigenous Millennialism: Murabitun Sufism in the Black African townships of South Africa  Matthias Gebauer 13 Apocalyptic Millennialism: The Most Powerful, Volatile, Imaginary Force in Human History  Richard Landes Index

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Book SynopsisWhat do dice and gods have in common? What is the relationship between dice divination and dice gambling? This interdisciplinary collaboration situates the tenth-century Chinese Buddhist “Divination of Maheśvara” within a deep Chinese backstory of divination with dice and numbers going back to at least the 4th century BCE. Simultaneously, the authors track this specific method of dice divination across the Silk Road and into ancient India through a detailed study of the material culture, poetics, and ritual processes of dice divination in Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian contexts. The result is an extended meditation on the unpredictable movements of gods, dice, divination books, and divination users across the various languages, cultures, and religions of the Silk Road.Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Abbreviations Introduction: Playing Dice with the Gods  1 Meta-Divination  2 Gambling with the Gods  3 Dice Gaming and Dice Divination  4 A Relational Network of Gods, Dice, Books, Divination Users, and Mantic Figures  5 Outline of the Work 1 The Divination of Maheśvara  1 The Manuscript  2 Introducing the Divination of Maheśvara  3 The Gods and Spirits in the Divination of Maheśvara  4 Translation and Transcription of the Divination of Maheśvara 2 The Divination of Maheśvara and Chinese Numerical Trigram Divination  1 Material Culture and Ritual Process in Chinese Numerical Trigram Texts  2 Numerical Trigrams in the Stalk Divination and the Baoshan Divination Record  3 The Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method and the Sutra on the Divination of Good and Bad Karmic Retribution  4 A Case Study in Transmission: The Tricks of Jing, the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, and the Guan Gongming Divination Method  5 Poetry, Talismans, and Divination 3 The Divination of Maheśvara and Indic Dice Divination  1 The Divination of Maheśvara and Two Other Tenth-Century Dunhuang Dice Divination Codices  2 Ninth-Century Tibetan Dice Divination Texts from Dunhuang, Turfan, and Mazār Tāgh  3 Sanskrit Dice Divination Texts from Kucha  4 The Archeology and Mythology of Pāśaka Dice Conclusions: Inheriting the Wind Appendix: Divining with Sixteen Numerical Trigrams Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Zhou Changes, better known in the West as I Ching, is one of the masterpieces of world literature. This book, the climax of more than forty years of research in Chinese archaeology, explores the text’s origins in the oracle-bone and milfoil divinations of Bronze Age China and how it transformed over the course of the Zhou dynasty into the first of the Chinese classics. The book provides an in-depth survey of the theory and practice of divination to demonstrate how the hexagram and line statements of the text were produced and how they were understood at the time.Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Conventions Introduction Part 1 The Context 1 The Zhou Changes: Received Text and Early Manuscripts 2 The Philosophy of Divination in Ancient China 3 Turtle-Shell Divination 4 Milfoil Divination 5 Milfoil Divination with the Zhou Changes 6 The Poetic Imagination Part 2 The Text 7 The Hexagram 8 The Hexagram Statement 9 The Line Statement 10 Intra-hexagram and Inter-hexagram Structures of Hexagram Texts 11 The Hexagram Sequence 12 From Divination to Philosophy Works Cited Index of Zhou Changes Lines Index of Zhou Changes Hexagram and Line Statements Cited General Index

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Book SynopsisThis is the first comprehensive book that presents the manifold aspects of divination and prognostication in traditional and modern China, from the early period of oracle bones to present-day fortune-tellers. It introduces what is out there in the field of Chinese divination and prognostication, and how we can further explore it especially through different disciplines. Eminent specialists outline the classifications of divination, recently excavated texts, the relationship between practitioners and clients, the place of the “occult” arts in cosmology, literature and religion, and the bureaucratic system. Contributors are: Constance Cook, Richard J. Smith, Marc Kalinowski, Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Lü Lingfeng, Liao Hsien-huei, Philip Clart, Fabrizio Pregadio, Esther-Maria Guggenmos, Andrew Schonebaum, and Stéphanie Homola.

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Book SynopsisA great number of historical examples show how desperate people sought to obtain a glimpse of the future or explain certain incidents retrospectively through signs that had occurred in advance. In that sense, signs are always considered a portent of future events. In different societies, and at different times, the written or unwritten rules regarding their interpretation varied, although there was perhaps a common understanding of these processes. This present volume collates essays from specialists in the field of prognostication in the European Middle Ages. Contributors are Klaus Herbers, Wolfram Brandes, Zhao Lu, Rolf Scheuermann, Thomas Krümpel, Bernardo Bertholin Kerr, Gaelle Bosseman, Julia Eva Wannenmacher (†), Matthias Kaup, Vincent Gossaert, Jürgen Gebhardt, Matthias Gebauer, Richard Landes.Table of ContentsFigures and Tables Introduction: Signs of the Future  Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner Part 1 Signs and Dreams 1 Dreams, Visions, and Politics in Carolingian Europe  Klaus Herbers 2 Dum illum utero gestaret: The premonitory Dreams of Saints’ Mothers in Latin Hagiography  Patrick Henriet 3 Sepe verum somniant, qui presunt populis: The Dubious Veracity of Dreams  Albert Schirrmeister Part 2 Signs and Nature 4 The Emblematic Birth of a Monster in the High Middle Ages  Hans-Christian Lehner 5 Strange Events and Shaky Ground: On Earthquakes, Matthew Paris and ‘Solid Facts’  Manuel Kamenzin 6 Between Astrological Divination, Local Knowledge and Political Intentions: Prognostics and “Epignostics” Related to Natural Disasters in the Middle Ages  Christian Rohr Part 3 Practices and Experts 7 Analogy at Work in Western Medieval Divination  Stefano Rapisarda 8 Hohe Prälaten der römischen Kurie beim Wahrsager (XIII. Jahrhundert)  Agostino Paravicini Bagliani 9 Signs from the Afterlife: Consulting the Dead about the Future in Medieval Times  Matthias Heiduk 10 Alternative Losentscheidungsverfahren oder imitationes sortium in Byzanz  Michael Grünbart 11 Al-Ashraf ˁUmar’s Tabṣira: Chapter xxxiv: Rainbows, Shooting Stars, and Haloes as Signs of the Future  Petra G. Schmidl

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Book SynopsisFew religious innovations have shaped Chinese history like the emergence of spirit-writing during the Song dynasty. From a divinatory technique it evolved into a complex ritual practice used to transmit messages and revelations from the Gods. This resulted in the production of countless religious scriptures that now form an essential corpus, widely venerated and recited to this day, that is still largely untapped by research. Using historical and ethnographic approaches, this volume for the first time offers a comprehensive overview of the history of spirit-writing, examining its evolution over a millennium, the practices and technologies used, and the communities involved.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Figures and Tables Note on Formal Conventions Dynastic Table 1 Introduction to the Volume  Matthias Schumann and Elena Valussi Part 1 Overview Papers 2 Making the Gods Write: A Short History of Spirit-Written Revelations in China, 1000–1400  Vincent Goossaert 3 Spirit-Writing Practices from the Song to Ming Periods and Their Relation to Politics and Religion  Wang Chien-chuan 王 見川 4 Women, Goddesses, and Gender Affinity in Spirit-Writing  Elena Valussi Part 2 Changing Techniques and Practices 5 Terminology and Typology of Spirit-Writing in Early Modern China: A Preliminary Study  Hu Jiechen 6 The Transcendent of the Plate The Lingji zhimi 靈乩指迷 (Instructions on the numinous stylus) and the Reform of Spirit-Writing Techniques during the First Half of the Twentieth Century  Fan Chun-wu 范 純武 Part 3 Spirit-Writing and the Literati Elites in Late Imperial China 7 Instantiating the Genealogy of the Way: Spirit-Writing in the Construction of Peng Dingqiu’s Confucian Pantheon  Daniel Burton-Rose 8 A Credulous Skeptic: Ji Yun on the Mantic Arts and Spirit-Writing  Michael Lackner 9 The Liu-Han Altar: Between a Literati Spirit-Writing Altar and Popular Religion  Zhu Mingchuan 朱 明川 Part 4 Spirit-Writing and Redemptive Societies 10 “Protecting the Dao and Transmitting the Classics” The New Religion to Save the World and the Confucian Dimension of Spirit-Writing in Republican China  Matthias Schumann 11 Spirit-Writing and the Daoyuan’s Gendered Teachings  Xia Shi 12 The Phoenix Perches in the Land of the Kami: Spirit-Writing from Yiguandao to Tendō  Nikolas Broy Part 5 Local Communities and Transregional Networks 13 The Nineteenth Century Spirit-Writing Movement and the Transformation of Local Religion in Western Guangdong  Ichiko Shiga 14 The Rise of Spirit-Writing Cults in Chaozhou: Reassessing the Role of Charitable Halls  Li Guoping 李 國平 15 Spirit-Writing Altars in Contemporary Hong Kong: A Case Study of Fei Ngan Tung Buddhism and Daoism Society  Luo Dan 羅 丹 16 A Motley Phoenix? On the Diversity of Spirit-Writing Temples and Their Practices in Puli, Taiwan  Paul R. Katz Index

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