From “Golden Strategy” to “Zengshanbuyi: I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored”: How a Six Lines Classic Was Forged

When people talk about Six Lines (Liu Yao, Wen Wang Gua) divination today, most serious study routes eventually circle back to one core book: I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi).

It is not the earliest Six Lines classic, but it has become the most influential and most practical one. Many practitioners feel that “if you study Six Lines but never read Zengshan Buyi, it is a real pity.” To truly understand this book, it actually helps to start with its origin story.

1. Late-Ming and Early-Qing Background: Starting From “Golden Strategy”

Golden Strategy as a compressed “source code”

The story of Zengshan Buyi really begins with another famous text from the Ming dynasty, Huangjin Ce (Golden Strategy). In some English writings you may also see the more informal translation “Golden Yarrow Tally”, but in this article we use Golden Strategy as the main title, since it better matches the original tone and historical usage.

In the Ming and Qing esoteric tradition, scholars and practitioners treated Golden Strategy as one of the core blueprints of Six Lines divination. Later works such as The Orthodox Method of I Ching Divination (Bushi Zhengzong) and I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi) directly absorbed Golden Strategy into their structure.

The distinctive feature of Golden Strategy is its attempt to compress an entire “grammar” of Six Lines divination into a short, dense text. It integrates:

In modern language, Golden Strategy functions like a highly compressed source code for later Six Lines techniques. Many of the basic concepts we now take for granted in Na Jia and Wen Wang Gua can be traced back to this text.

In my book The Orthodox Method of I Ching Divination (Bushi Zhengzong), I translate Golden Strategy in Volume Five, “Golden Strategy,” Part 9, “Seeking Fame.” There, the text does not just present abstract rules. It ties Six Lines grammar to very concrete stories about imperial examinations and the lives of historical figures.

• “When the parents line is prosperous but the officials line is weak, it is a pity that Liu Kui failed in the exam; when the parents line is weak but the officials line is strong, Zhang Shuang succeeded in the exam. The parents and officials lines should both be strong and undamaged for success in exams.
• If the parents line is prosperous or supportive, but the officials line is in void or absent from the hexagram, the writing may be excellent, but it will not lead to success, as seen in the case of Liu Kui (刘篑, Liú Kuì) during the Song Dynasty (宋朝, 960–1279 CE), whose eloquent writing did not earn him a high rank. However, if the parents line is weak but the officials line is prosperous and active, supporting the literature, even ordinary writing can lead to success, much like Zhang Shuang (张爽, Zhāng Shuǎng), whose writing lacked refinement but still achieved high rank.”
• “If the host line becomes active but transforms into void, but the significator god is prosperous or supportive, a “Leopard Change” turns into a “Butterfly Dream.” If the hexagram shows certain success, but the host line becomes active and transforms into the tomb or extinction, it indicates that even if fame is achieved, the individual will not live to enjoy it. In a wandering soul hexagram, death may occur while traveling; in a returning soul hexagram, death may occur upon returning home. If the tomb or extinction line is aligned with the year lord, it foretells death within a year.
• [Annotation from the Translator]
  Leopard Change: This term is derived from the Yijing (I Ching), specifically from the hexagram “Ge” (Revolution/Transformation), where the upper line (sixth line) says, “The noble person transforms like a leopard; the petty person changes his face.”
• The “leopard change” metaphorically refers to the profound and essential transformation a noble person undergoes, signifying deep inner change and moral or intellectual development. In contrast, a “petty person” only changes superficially. This term is often used to describe a significant and positive transformation in character or behavior.
• Upon waking, he wonders whether he is a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he is a man. This story illustrates the concept of transformation and the blurred line between reality and illusion. In divination, “butterfly dream” can symbolize transient, illusory achievements or ambitions that may not endure.
• The term “Leopard Change” is used to describe the profound transformation of a noble person, as mentioned in the Yijing (I Ching). It signifies deep and essential inner change, unlike superficial alterations. However, if such a transformation fails or is incomplete, it may result in a “Butterfly Dream”, which implies an illusion or a transient, insubstantial change. This term can suggest that the anticipated profound transformation has not materialized as expected, leading to a more fleeting or insubstantial outcome.”
  
  These passages show how Golden Strategy connects technical rules about the parents line, officials line, host line, and significator god with the concrete realities of the imperial examination system. Success or failure in the exams could determine a person’s entire life, and Golden Strategy treats these life-changing decisions as part of a larger pattern of fate, timing, and transformation.

Why Zengshan Buyi became necessary

However, this creates a practical problem.
Golden Strategy uses extremely condensed classical Chinese and is full of allusions and layered references. Most readers find it hard to understand unless they have a strong background in both the I Ching and pre-modern Chinese literature.

In the late-Ming and early-Qing period, society was in turmoil and intellectual life was extremely active. Many different divination schools co-existed and competed. In this context, practitioners shared a common wish: to digest and recompile Golden Strategy into something more systematic and practical, something a working diviner could apply line by line.

Zengshan Buyi is the direct product of this wish.

If you would like to see the original Golden Strategy passages and their classical context, you can consult my English translation The Orthodox Method of I Ching Divination (Bushi Zhengzong), which preserves and reorganizes these materials for modern readers.

2. The First Round of “Add and Delete”: A Practitioner’s Rewrite of Golden Strategy

Wild Crane Elder and decades of testing

In traditional Zengshan Buyi editions, you often see a line like:

Written by Wild Crane Elder (Yehe Laoren), reviewed by Li Woping, expanded and edited by Li Wenhui (styled Juezi). IChingStream

Modern research suggests that the “Wild Crane Elder” behind the earliest layer of the text was a professional diviner active in the chaotic late-Ming era. His real name is lost, but his methods survived in manuscripts that circulated among practitioners.

According to later prefaces and investigations, this Wild Crane Elder spent decades studying Golden Strategy, then testing it in real-world divination. For each principle in Golden Strategy, he would repeatedly check:

• Does this rule actually hold up when I cast hexagrams for clients?
• Under what conditions does it work?
• Under what conditions does it fail or need to be refined?

Based on this long practice, he carried out the first “add and delete” operation on Golden Strategy:

• For rules that repeatedly proved accurate, he preserved them and often explained them more clearly.
• For rules that did not match reality, he removed or sharply criticized them.
• For patterns that were not explicitly covered in Golden Strategy but kept appearing in practice, he added new explanations and concise methods.

He then reorganized this material by topic. Instead of leaving everything in one long, dense sequence, he re-sorted it into chapters and sections that corresponded to practical questions: wealth, marriage, career, lawsuits, examinations, travel, illness, and so on.

The result was not yet a polished “published book,” but a working practitioner’s manual based on Golden Strategy, rewritten from the ground up for empirical use. This early manuscript circulated only in small circles and was never formally printed in the Wild Crane Elder’s lifetime.

In other words, the first “Zeng” (add) and “Shan” (delete) of Zeng-Shan Bu-Yi had already been completed at this stage: Golden Strategy had been taken apart, tested, re-evaluated, and reassembled as a much more practical system.

3. Li Woping and Li Wenhui: Second-Generation Verification and Editing

How the manuscript changed hands

The second key phase took place in the early Qing dynasty, when this rare manuscript reached the hands of two important figures: Li Woping and Li Wenhui (styled Juezi).

Li Woping studied the Wild Crane Elder’s manuscript in depth and realized that its methods were far more reliable than most divination books circulating at the time. He acted as a bridge, bringing the manuscript to his fellow scholar Li Wenhui and encouraging him to take it seriously.

Li Wenhui’s own preface tells us that he had studied I Ching and divination since childhood. He had read many classics, yet in real divination he always felt that “some things hit, some things miss.” Only after he obtained the Wild Crane Elder’s manuscript and meditated on it quietly did he suddenly feel that “everything finally connected.”

In his view, the problem was not only his own skill. It was also a question of whether the books themselves were based on correct, thoroughly tested methods.

The second round of “add and delete”

From that point on, Li Wenhui began his own long cycle of verification and editing. Over several decades, he:

• applied the manuscript’s methods to his own divination practice
• recorded which rules worked and which needed adjustment
• clarified difficult passages, reorganized scattered techniques, and added his own case studies

This is the second round of “add and delete” in the story. Zengshan Buyi, in the form we know today, reflects both the Wild Crane Elder’s first-generation reworking of Golden Strategy and Li Wenhui’s second-generation refinement in the early Qing.

By around 1690, in the 29th year of the Kangxi emperor, Li Wenhui finally had enough confidence in the system to publish it. He gave it the title Zengshan Buyi, which we translate as I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored, a rendering suggested by Mogg Morgan of Mandrake of Oxford, chosen to suit modern English-language readers and to highlight exactly what the book tries to do:

• “Zeng” (to add): add what practice has proven to be effective methods and clear case examples

• “Shan” (to delete): delete speculative theories and unreliable slogans
• “Bu Yi” (divination with the Changes): return divination to the core spirit of the I Ching

4. Behind One Book, Eighty Years of Real Divination

A systematic cleanup of Six Lines methods

From this perspective, I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored is not a book born in a single flash of inspiration. It is the summary of roughly two generations of real divination work, spanning from the late Ming to the early Qing.

The book carries out a very systematic cleanup of the Six Lines field. It criticizes popular but unreliable shortcuts, such as relying only on fancy images, only on certain “lucky animals,” or only on void and break, while ignoring the actual structure of the Six Relationships and the use of the significator line.

It also explains in detail under which conditions a traditional slogan is valid and under which conditions it misleads you. Principles do not stand alone; they always live inside a specific structure.

Why the structure still feels modern

The text then matches rules with hundreds of real case studies. Readers can see how a principle plays out in actual questions about marriage, wealth, illness, travel, exams, and so on.

Structurally, the book feels surprisingly modern. It has:

• a “theory section” that lays out the core grammar (significator, movement and stillness, elemental strength and seasonal phases, void and break, punishment, clash, compatibility, and more)
• large clusters of topic-based case studies that show how the same grammar works in different scenarios

For today’s readers, this is exactly what we expect from a good technical manual. At the time, however, it marked a clear step forward from the earlier patchwork of untested slogans and scattered notes.

This also explains why, even now, so many practitioners still treat Zengshan Buyi as a required textbook:

• Beginners can use it to internalize key principles by reading through realistic cases.
• Intermediate and advanced diviners can reread it and find new layers in how the rules interact.
• Researchers can treat it as a data set of pre-modern divination practice, grounded in a specific historical period.

5. How “Golden Strategy,” “Bushi Zhengzong,” and “Zengshan Buyi” Fit Together

A clear lineage between three classics

Putting everything together, we can see a clear lineage:

• Huangjin Ce (Golden Strategy, sometimes called Golden Yarrow Tally)
  A dense, influential Ming-dynasty blueprint that condenses Six Lines methods into high-compression classical prose.
• The Orthodox Method of I Ching Divination (Bushi Zhengzong)
  A later compilation that preserves Golden Strategy and related materials in a more structured form. It makes it easier for modern readers to access the original text and its allusions.
• I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi)
  A two-generation “add and delete” project that rewrites Golden Strategy and related teachings based on decades of real divination practice, then organizes them into a practical, case-based system.

Understanding this background does more than satisfy historical curiosity. It also changes how we read the books themselves.

When you know that Zengshan Buyi grows out of Golden Strategy and is cross-linked with Bushi Zhengzong, every principle in these texts stops looking like a mysterious saying from nowhere. It becomes what it truly is: the distilled result of continuous testing, editing, and rewriting, created by practitioners who had to get real answers for real clients.

A suggested path for modern readers

For readers and learners today, this lineage suggests a powerful study path:

• and always remember that the real spirit of this tradition is exactly what Zengshan Buyi embodies in its title: keep what is proven, let go of what is not, and continue to refine divination through practice
• use I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi) as your practical foundation
• refer back to The Orthodox Method of I Ching Divination (Bushi Zhengzong) when you want to see the original Golden Strategy passages and early formulations