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.
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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).
