1. Origin
It is said that the history of fortune-telling began with Guiguzi in the Warring States Period[4]; another legend is that it originated from Li Xuzhong in the Tang Dynasty, but he changed his name to Guiguzi . People who want fortune telling will often turn to someone who is knowledgeable or respected in numerology to seek guidance and help them solve problems. In ancient China, this kind of person was also called "fortune teller".
According to Voice of China's "Evening News Peak" report [5], fortune telling may have originated in the pre-Qin Dynasty. When the ancient Egyptians used papyrus to record events and the ancient Babylonians used clay tablets as books, ancient Chinese people hacked Bamboo is made into strips, thinned, polished, and burned before being braided together. The most vivid historical facts are recorded on bamboo slips and passed down to future generations.
2. Development
"Book of Rites·Jingjie" [3]: ""The Book of Changes" says: 'A gentleman should be careful when starting. A mistake as small as a millimeter can lead to a mistake of a thousand miles." The ancients believed Small changes can have a big impact on the future. "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals" records: There is a border town in Chu State called Beiliang. The girls there and the girls in the border towns in Wu State were picking mulberry leaves on the border. When they were playing games, the girls from Wu State accidentally stepped on them. Hurt the humble girl. The people from Beiliang took the injured girl to blame the people of Wu. The people of Wu made disrespectful remarks, and the Beiliang people were very angry, so they killed the people of Wu and left. The people of Wu State went to Beiliang to take revenge and killed the whole family of the Beiliang man. The Shouyi doctor in Beiliang was furious, so he sent troops to fight back against the Wu people, killing all the local Wu people, old and young. King Wu Yimei was very angry when he heard this. He sent troops to invade the border towns of Chu State and captured Yi before leaving. As a result, Wu and Chu had a large-scale conflict. From a foot injury while playing games, to the outbreak of a large-scale war between the two countries, to the Wu army's invasion of Yingdu, there was a series of evolutionary processes in between. There was an invisible force of death that pushed the incident step by step irreparably into an uncontrollable situation. situation. Therefore, the ancients took sealing bad luck and prosperity very seriously, because small things can change the future destiny. Fortune telling can be traced back to the Xia and Shang Dynasties. This can be confirmed by the fact that most of the unearthed oracle bone inscriptions are inscriptions. At that time, before holding important events such as sacrifices, conquests, and weddings, the ancestors would first burn tortoise shells or use yarrow to perform devout divination on the matter, so as to judge good or bad luck. This was probably the germination of early fortune-telling. In the Zhou Dynasty, King Wen, Duke Zhou and others compiled a book based on the experience of their predecessors and named it "The Book of Changes", which raised the art of divination to a theoretical level. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Confucius and his disciples added annotated articles called Shiyi to the Book of Changes. From then on, the Book of Changes was also called the Book of Changes. Almost at the same time, Zou Yan, a doctor of Qi State, founded the Five Elements Theory, which was combined with the Yin and Yang theory of the Book of Changes to form the Yin and Yang Five Elements Theory. In the Han Dynasty, it was carried forward by Dong Zhongshu, Jingfang and others, and gradually formed a divination and fortune-telling system with theories and methods. However, the divination and fortune-telling system at that time was still relatively crude, limited to fortune-telling, and the accuracy of fortune-telling was not very high.