Lingqijing

Lingqijing (or Ling Ch'i Ching; 靈棋經 lit. "Classic of the Divine Chess") is a Chinese book of divination. It is not known when, nor by whom, it was written, though legend has it that the strategist Zhang Liang got it from Huang Shigong (黃石公), a semi-mythological figure in Chinese history. The first commented edition of the work appeared in the Jin Dynasty.

Ling Qi Jing
Classic of the Divine Chess
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese靈棋經
Simplified Chinese灵棋经
Hanyu PinyinLíngqíjīng
Literal meaning"Classic of the Divine Chess"
North Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl령기경
South Korean name
Hangul영기경
Japanese name
Hiraganaれいききょう
Kyūjitai靈棋經
Shinjitai霊棋経

As its name suggests, the work concerns "divining" with tokens, such as Chinese chess (xiangqi i.e.象棋) pieces (instead of with the more traditional turtle shells or yarrow stalks used in I Ching divination).

Twelve Xiangqi pieces [lower-alpha 1] are used; each piece is a disc with a character on one side, and the other side unmarked. Four have the character for "up" (上, pronounced shang), four have the character for "middle" (中, zhong), and four have the character for "down" (下, xia), representing respectively the Three Realms: Heaven (天, tian), Humanity (人, ren), and Earth (地, di).

These pieces are cast onto a surface, and the text of the Lingqijing the resulting combination is in for what fortune the combination means.

The text of the Lingqijing has an entry for all 125 combinations (i.e., three kinds of pieces, times the five possibilities for each kind: one through four pieces landing face up, or none).

Notes
  1. As can be seen in entry "Xiangqi", none of the characters 下, 中, or 上 occur actually as characters on Xiangqi pieces. The pieces for Lingqijing look like Xiangqi pieces, except for bearing these special characters.

See also

References
  • Sawyer, Ralph D.; Sawyer, Mei-chün Lee (2004). Ling Ch'i Ching: A Classic Chinese Oracle. Westview Press. ISBN 9780813341743.
  • Kashiwa, Ivan (October 1997). Spirit Tokens of the Ling Qi Jing (1 ed.). Weatherhill. ISBN 978-0834804005.
  • 东方朔 [Dongfang Shuo]; 刘基军 [Jijun Liu] (2004). 靈棋經 [Ling qi jing] (in Chinese). 山东画报出版社. ISBN 7806038337. OCLC 56926286.
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