Category: Learning Resources

The zengshanbuyi English edition: I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored

The term zengshanbuyi is often used in catalogs and searches to refer to Zengshan Buyi, the Na Jia Six Lines classic translated here as I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored. If you are interested in I Ching divination, Six Lines (Liu Yao, Wen Wang Gua), or the Na Jia Method, Zengshan Buyi is one of the core texts you will eventually encounter. This article introduces its history, structure, case system, timing methods, and the English edition prepared for modern readers.

Abstract

This article offers an English-language introduction to “I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi 增删卜易)”, one of the most influential manuals in the Na Jia based tradition of Six Lines (Liu Yao, Wen Wang Gua) divination. Compiled around 1690 from the notes of the mysterious “Wild Crane Elder” and organised by the early Qing scholar Li Wenhui (styled Juezi), with later appraisal by his fellow townsman Chujiang Li Woping, Zengshan Buyi stands at a key moment in late imperial Chinese divination culture, where long image-and-number traditions were tested against lived divinatory practice.

The article outlines the historical background of the Na Jia Method, the internal structure of Zengshan Buyi, and its program of “augmenting and deleting” earlier rules on the basis of empirical verification. It then focuses on the book’s topic based case organisation, with examples from wealth, marriage, weather divination, and training exercises such as hidden object readings.

Particular attention is given to how Six Lines diviners used line strength, voids, breaks, and the Twelve Life Stages to forecast not only outcomes but also concrete timing, for example predicting in which lunar month a line would enter its tomb.

The final sections describe the first complete English edition of Zengshan Buyi, prepared as a four volume set. This edition preserves one-to-one correspondence with the Chinese text, standardises technical terminology across related classics, and adds clearly marked translator’s annotations for idioms, historical allusions, and culturally specific references. It also includes visual study aids, such as line structure diagrams, charts of the Six Clashes and Six Compatibles, and timing charts for the Heavenly Stems and Five Elements. The aim is to make this important Na Jia manual usable for both practitioners and scholars who do not read Chinese, and to provide a practical gateway into the full case tradition for further study and teaching.

1. Introduction: Na Jia Six Lines and Zengshan Buyi

Within contemporary practice of I Ching divination outside China, the classical yarrow-stalk method and the line statements of the Zhou Yi are relatively well known, largely through European translations of the canonical text. By contrast, the Na Jia based Six Lines tradition, often called Liu Yao or Wen Wang Gua, remains relatively inaccessible to readers who do not read Chinese. Yet in Chinese divination communities this integrated method, which combines Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, and Five Elements with hexagram structures, has been one of the dominant systems for several centuries.

Among the core texts of this tradition, Zengshan Buyi occupies a distinctive place. For many modern practitioners of Six Lines divination and Wen Wang Gua, it is the first book to be read, reread, and argued over. It is frequently described as a practical handbook that both systematises and simplifies an earlier, more diffuse Na Jia tradition, while offering hundreds of worked examples drawn from divinatory practice.

The purpose of this article is to introduce “I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi 增删卜易)” to an English-reading audience in a way that is useful both for divination practitioners and for scholars interested in late imperial Chinese divination. I summarise its historical background, its internal structure, its self-conscious program of “augmentation and deletion”, and its long-term impact on how Six Lines is taught and practised. I also briefly describe the principles behind the English edition, which aims to make this tradition accessible without sacrificing its technical depth.

2. Historical background: from Na Jia to Zengshan Buyi

The Na Jia Method emerged from the broader image-and-number exegesis of the Zhou Yi associated with Han dynasty figures such as Jing Fang. In this approach, each hexagram line is assigned a Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch, embedding calendrical and cosmological correlations directly into the divinatory figure.

The system allows diviners to read a hexagram simultaneously in several registers:

• elemental generation and overcoming
• temporal cycles and calendrical timing
• directional indications
• the Six Relationships (parents, wife and wealth, officials and ghosts, siblings, descendants)

Over subsequent centuries, this method was elaborated in many directions. Some branches emphasised dense systems of spirits and omens. Others combined Na Jia with techniques of astrology, calendrics, and physiognomy. By the late Ming and early Qing periods, practitioners had access to a wide array of divinatory manuals, many of which offered overlapping, and sometimes contradictory, rules.

It is within this context that Zengshan Buyi appears. The figure of Yehe Laoren, the “Wild Crane Elder”, is partly veiled in legend. He is variously described as a reclusive adept who “studied the Dao for decades” and kept four decades of divination records, testing written doctrines against outcomes.

Li Wenhui, styled Juezi, later obtained Wild Crane Elder’s experiential manuscript through his fellow townsman Chujiang Li Woping. Drawing on some forty years of his own divinatory practice, he collated, verified, and supplemented these materials, eventually organising them into the work now known as Zengshan Buyi. Chujiang Li Woping, in turn, wrote an appraisal and assisted in preparing the text for print. Additional voices, such as the preface writer Zhang Wen and the commentator Li Tan, further shaped the text we read today.

The English title “I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored” reflects the book’s claim to repair and systematise earlier teachings. Literally, Zengshan Buyi means “Augmentations and Deletions to the Book of Divination”. It claims not merely to summarise previous manuals but to test and revise them, retaining what is “verified by repeated experience”, rejecting what fails to manifest, and adding rules derived from long-term observation. In this sense, the book is both a compendium and a polemic.

3. Structure and organisation of Zengshan Buyi

“I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi 增删卜易)” is not a conventional commentary on the Zhou Yi. It is a structured manual of method and case-based application. Different Chinese editions vary in length and arrangement, but the work can be broadly divided into three overlapping components.

First, there are doctrinal chapters that lay out basic principles. These include discussions of:

• the Six Relationships
• the role of the host and corresponding lines
• the use of the significator line
• the cycles of birth, prosperity, rest, constraint, and extinction
• technical states such as void periods, monthly breaks, punishment, harm, and clash

Second, there are critical essays on earlier doctrines. Here the authors directly engage earlier works, including highly regarded texts such as “Huang Jin Ce” (“Golden Strategy” or “Golden Yarrow Tally”). They identify rules that allegedly fail in practice, call out logical inconsistencies, and propose revisions. This material gives the book its “augment and delete” character.

Third, there is a large body of applied cases. The text integrates several hundred divination examples, classified by topic:

• wealth and business
• examinations and official advancement
• marriage and relationships
• illness and medical questions
• lawsuits and litigation
• travel and missing persons
• lost objects
• feng shui and grave sites
• annual fortune and miscellaneous topics

In the Chinese tradition the case count is usually given as around three hundred. In the English edition the cases have been carefully recounted and cross-checked, resulting in 465 discrete examples, numbered by hexagram groups.

Each case typically provides the question, the hexagram with its Na Jia assignments, key active lines, the author’s reasoning, and the eventual outcome. In many instances the authors also note alternative interpretations, ambiguities, or failures, and they do not hesitate to admit when an older rule did not hold in a given situation. This case-driven structure is one of the reasons the book has become a practical reference manual rather than a purely theoretical treatise.

4. “Augmentations and deletions”: critique and simplification

The “augment and delete” program of Zengshan Buyi operates on several levels.

One target is the excessive weight given to elaborate systems of spirits and killing stars (shen sha). Earlier manuals sometimes introduced long lists of omens and named configurations that, in practice, were difficult to verify and easy to use in a flexible, and therefore unfalsifiable, way. The authors of Zengshan Buyi sharply reduce the role of such spirits, retaining only a small number as auxiliary indicators while insisting that the core of judgment must rest on Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, and the dynamics of the Six Relationships.

A second target is the idea that a single chart can be used to answer all questions about a client’s life. Some traditions claimed that one hexagram could cover wealth, longevity, marriage, and offspring. Zengshan Buyi is critical of this approach, pointing out that it often leads to self-contradictory conclusions.

Instead, the authors advocate a principle of “one matter per divination”, arguing that focused questions and focused interpretations are necessary for clarity and reliability.

A third area of critique concerns technical devices such as the hexagram body, additional “bodies” attached to stems, and complicated rules about mutual correlation that proliferated in some lines of transmission. Zengshan Buyi deliberately simplifies this landscape. It retains the host line, the corresponding line, and the significator line as central positions, and it treats many other devices as either unnecessary or secondary in actual practice.

The authors also re-examine received rules on void periods, monthly breaks, clash, punishment, harm, and the states of the line such as rest, prosperity, constraint, and extinction. They draw on long-term records to show when a line that appears weak or void at the moment of divination will in fact become effective again when the relevant time or clash arrives. This empirical attitude gives the work a distinctive voice within the wider tradition.

5. Case-based pedagogy in Six Lines divination

One of the most practical features of “I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi 增删卜易)” is its extensive use of topic-based case collections. Rather than present only general rules, the authors provide numerous examples for each major sphere of life.

In the wealth section, cases address questions such as opening a shop, investing in goods, dealing with partners, and anticipating loss or gain. The illness section considers different types of disease, the likelihood of recovery, the suitability of medical practitioners, and the timing of critical turns. The marriage section discusses suitability of partners, hidden obstacles, family opposition, and questions of timing.

The same pattern repeats across examinations and official careers, lawsuits, journeys and travellers, lost items and missing persons, and evaluation of sites for burials.

Crucially, these cases do not only answer whether something will happen. They also pay close attention to when it is likely to happen. By tracking when key lines enter or leave states such as prosperity, rest, constraint, tomb, or void, and by relating these changes to specific months and branches, Zengshan Buyi shows how Six Lines divination can forecast both the outcome and its timing.

Case [365] is a clear example, where an apparently smooth situation at the time of divination is explicitly tied to a turning point in the ninth month, when loss finally manifests. In the English edition, a “palm mnemonic” diagram for the Twelve Life Stages is included next to this case to help readers understand why the siblings line is judged to enter the tomb in that specific month.

Volume Four, Chapter on Seeking Wealth

The chapter opens with a succinct rule:

If both the wealth and descendants lines are absent, it is best to wait patiently. If the wealth and descendants lines are not present, or if they are present but in a state of rest and constraint, void, broken, tomb, or extinction, or if they are punished, overcome, clashed, or harmed, it is advisable to wait, as seeking wealth will be futile. Juezi said: If the daily or monthly branches act as wealth, or if they are hidden and prosperous, wealth can still be sought.

This general statement is immediately followed by concrete charts and outcomes.

Case [364]: Seeking wealth when the wealth line is absent
K month, V G day (void: A and B) [1]. A divination was made to inquire about seeking wealth. The hexagram obtained was Ge.

Judgment: In the hexagram, the wealth line is not present, and the M siblings line holds the host. The parents line coincides with the monthly branch and generates and supports the siblings line, making it as futile as climbing a tree to catch a fish. [2]

[Annotation from the Translator]

[1]

[2] The idiom “缘木求鱼” (yuán mù qiú yú) translates to “climbing a tree to catch a fish.” It originates from Chinese literature and is used metaphorically to describe an effort or method that is completely futile and inappropriate for achieving the desired outcome. The imagery suggests that trying to catch fish by climbing a tree is absurd and bound to fail because fish are found in water, not trees.

In essence, the idiom implies that if one uses the wrong approach or pursues a goal in an illogical manner, success will be impossible. It highlights the importance of using appropriate and sensible methods to achieve one’s objectives.

Case [365]: Lending money at interest
F month, III E day (void: A and B). A divination was made to inquire about lending money at interest. The hexagram obtained was Wei Ji to Gui Mei.

Judgment: In this hexagram, the host line aligns with the monthly branch, and both the active and transformed lines are siblings. During the divination, everything seemed smooth. However, by the ninth month (L), when the siblings line (Fire) entered the tomb [1], financial losses occurred due to deceit. How can it be said that overly active siblings lines do not lead to financial loss?

[Annotation from the Translator]

[1] The palm mnemonic for the Twelve Life Stages (see the following figure) shows how, in this case, the siblings line naturally reaches its tomb position in the ninth lunar month, which is why the loss is expected to manifest at that time.

Case [369]: Profit and the hidden cost to a sibling
K month, III G day (void: C and D). A divination was made to inquire about the profitability of a trade. The hexagram obtained was Shi to Kan.

When the G wealth line holds the host and the siblings line is active, it suggests a risk of financial loss. However, fortunately, the M Water line transforms into L Earth, causing the siblings line to be overcome and thus preventing it from robbing the wealth. This situation is favorable and indicates potential profit. Indeed, profit was gained. Later, in the ninth month, the querent’s younger brother suddenly fell ill and died. It was then realised that the M Water siblings line had transformed into the ghosts line, leading to this outcome. Instances where divinations about wealth reveal the loss of a sibling are not uncommon, and future practitioners should pay close attention to such signs.

Volume Four, Chapter on Marriage

The marriage chapter similarly combines concise rules with detailed stories. Two examples illustrate how timing, breaks, and the interaction of wealth and officials lines are handled.

Case [382]: Predicting the year of marriage
In the year of A, in the H month and on the VI H day (void: A and B), a divination was made regarding marriage. The hexagram obtained was Ming Yi to Feng.

Judgment: The B officials line holds the host, although it encounters both monthly and daily breaks. Fortunately, it transforms into a wealth line that returns to generate the host. Although it is currently broken, there will be a time when it is no longer broken. Next year, the year of B, a good match will be found. Indeed, in the fourth month of the following year, a good marriage was arranged. The reason it was predicted for the year of B is that it is the year when the broken host line is filled. Is this not because the wealth line generates the host, and the corresponding line overcomes the host?

Case [385]: Agreement now, regret later
In the month of F, on the V A day (void: G and H), a divination was made to inquire whether the marriage would be approved. The hexagram obtained was Heng to Jin.

Judgment: If the inner trigram has contradictory echoes, it indicates a situation of instability and change, where initial agreement may be followed by regret. He asked, “Is this truly as you say? Will it be successful in the future?” I replied, “Since the corresponding line is associated with wealth, is active, and generates the host, it will certainly succeed in the eighth or ninth month.” Indeed, it was accomplished in the month of K, which corresponds to the host line coinciding with the month and clashing away the D Wood.

These examples show how general statements about wealth and marriage are tested against concrete outcomes, often tracked over several months or years. They also illustrate the way Zengshan Buyi reads line strength, voids, breaks, and transformations not only for immediate profit or loss, but also for collateral events affecting siblings and the timing of marriage.

By reading through such cases, students learn not only how to apply formal rules, but also how experienced diviners in late imperial China framed questions, weighed conflicting indicators, and related hexagram structure to social realities. The fact that the authors include both successful and unsuccessful judgments, and sometimes comment on their own errors, reinforces the work’s educational character.

The topic-based arrangement also makes the book a useful reference. Practitioners can consult a group of similar cases when dealing with a particular type of question and can compare their own reasoning with that of the text. This has contributed to the book’s status as a “must read” manual among modern Six Lines practitioners.

6. Weather divination as a training method (Case [201])

Zengshan Buyi also includes a section on weather divination, which the authors explicitly frame as suitable for beginners:

Descendants represent the sun, moon, and stars, and when they are active, they bring clear skies for thousands of miles. The “Golden Strategy” suggests that when wealth is active, it brings sunshine to all directions, but this is not entirely accurate. When the descendants are active, the skies will be clear and cloudless. Descendants are the source gods of wealth. Even if wealth is active and the skies are clear, if the descendants are in rest, in constraint, in void, broken, or present but inactive, it will not be completely sunny and there will be floating clouds or light fog.

Case [201]: Clear weather and the descendants line

For example: In the month of D, on the I G day (void: E and F), a divination was made regarding clear weather. The hexagram obtained was Da Zhuang to Guai. [201]

The J Metal descendants line is active and transforms into the advancing god, bringing clear skies on J and K days. Some might ask: when recording divinations, should we not focus on rare and extraordinary verifications? Why record such an obvious case? I reply: this is recorded so that beginners can easily understand it, which is why I noted it first.

Here the author is explicit that simple, repeatedly verifiable questions such as “Will it be clear tomorrow?” are pedagogically valuable. Students can practise reading descendants, wealth, and parents lines in different states and immediately test their understanding against observable weather.

7. Hidden-object divination (shefu) as practice

Although Zengshan Buyi itself does not include hidden-object divination, later sources preserve classic examples of shefu, in which the practitioner infers a concealed object solely from the hexagram. One well-known case appears in “Zhouyi Donglin (Collected Insights on I Ching Divination)” and is cited in “Beitang Shuchao”:

Case 23: Jin – Guo Pu Divines a Hidden Object (Tweezers) – 60. Jie to 21. Shi He

“Beitang Shuchao” cites “Donglin”: Shi An, Magistrate of Juan County, placed tweezers as a hidden object and asked Guo Pu to guess. He cast a divination and obtained “Jie to Shi He”.

Guo said, “It is not a hairpin and not an ornamental clasp; it is usually worn beneath the collar. It is an ornament for the hair at the temples, and it has two prongs.”

Judgment: Taiping Yulan cites it as, “This is a pair of tweezers; they have two prongs.” Hanshang Yi cites it as saying, “Hairpin, not a hairpin; clasp, not a clasp.” This is based on the inner trigram Dui, and Dui is Metal. In general, when interpreting a hexagram, one must begin from within. It also says, “It is on the lower part of the head and used to trim the beard and moustache.” The term “head” refers to Qian within Kan. The “beard” lies below the head and is soft, and this corresponds to Kan. Zhu’s Jingyi Kao says that these three-character phrases do not rhyme with what follows. But “clasp” and “beard” are not in fact out of rhyme, so Zhu is mistaken. In “60. Jie” the lower trigram is Dui; Dui opens its mouth in two prongs, and Dui is Metal, so the object is a metal thing with two prongs. The upper trigram Kan is the head, and the mutual trigram Gen is the beard, and the beard is below the head. A metal object with two prongs is again below the beard; therefore one knows that it is tweezers.

[Annotation from the Translator]

[1] Case 11 from Zhouyi Donglin.

[2] In ancient China, Shefu (Hidden Object Divination, Shefu, 射覆) was a type of game in which one attempted to divine the object hidden inside a container, such as a jar or box. Similar to weather forecasting, it also served as a method for honing one’s divinatory skills.

Shefu was not merely a form of entertainment—it was a practical training exercise for I Ching diviners. By attempting to determine unknown concealed items using hexagrams, practitioners could refine their interpretative abilities, intuition, and mastery of hexagram imagery. In historical records, even high-ranking officials and scholars participated in Shefu to test their predictive insight. Over time, it became one of the classic applications of I Ching divination in both scholarly and courtly circles.

From a pedagogical perspective, hidden-object divination functions much like weather divination: it provides abundant opportunities for practice, clear right-or-wrong feedback, and a safe environment in which to explore how trigrams, mutual trigrams, and elemental attributes work together to describe concrete objects. For modern students of I Ching divination, these training exercises are a bridge between abstract rules and the more consequential questions of everyday life.

[3]

From a pedagogical perspective, hidden-object divination functions much like weather divination. It provides abundant opportunities for practice, clear right-or-wrong feedback, and a safe environment in which to explore how trigrams, mutual trigrams, and elemental attributes work together to describe concrete objects.

For modern students of I Ching divination, these training exercises are a bridge between abstract rules and the more consequential questions of everyday life.

8. Influence on modern Six Lines (Liu Yao) and Wen Wang Gua practice

In modern Chinese Six Lines circles, Zengshan Buyi is frequently described as both an entry point and a standard of comparison. Many later manuals, whether introductory textbooks or advanced commentaries, assume familiarity with its terminology, structures, and canonical cases. Even authors who criticise the text for allegedly simplifying earlier image-and-number theories generally engage with it as a central reference.

The book’s emphasis on verification has also shaped expectations about what constitutes responsible divinatory practice. Its insistence on keeping records, revisiting past divinations to check outcomes, and discarding rules that repeatedly fail has encouraged a more self-critical approach, at least in some lineages.

At the same time, the text has played a role in bridging elite and popular divination. Its language is comparatively straightforward, and many of its cases concern everyday concerns such as illness, travel, small business ventures, and family affairs. This has allowed it to serve as a practical manual for working diviners, not only as an object of scholarly interest.

9. The Zengshanbuyi English edition: I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored

The English edition titled “I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi 增删卜易)” grew out of a desire to make this Na Jia classic accessible to readers who do not read Chinese, while preserving the technical precision that practitioners require. It is, to my knowledge, the first complete translation of the work into English.

Several principles guide the translation.

First, there is a commitment to one-to-one correspondence between the Chinese text and the English rendering. Cases, chapters, and technical terms are mapped consistently across the four volumes, so that readers can move between rules and applications without losing track of the underlying structure.

Second, specialised terminology of Six Lines divination is translated in a stable and transparent way, so that the same technical phrase is always rendered by the same English expression. Wherever possible, this terminology is aligned across related classics, such as “Fire Pearl Forest”, “Undersea Eye”, and the “Donglin” materials, to support comparative study.

Third, the Na Jia framework itself is preserved in a clear, systematic notation, so that readers can see at a glance how Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, and the Five Phases are embedded in each hexagram. The goal is to reduce the cognitive barrier for those who do not read Chinese while respecting the original logic of the system.

Fourth, the visual infrastructure that traditional readers would already know by heart is made explicit. The English edition includes:

Figure 1, for example, illustrates the standard line layout used in the cases, including Six Relationships, elemental attributions, and Na Jia assignments for each line.

Figure 2 presents a simplified chart of the Six Clashes, Six Compatibles, and directional correspondences, which readers can use as a quick reference when working through the case corpus. These additions do not alter the underlying arguments of the text, but are intended to make its methods more intelligible and teachable in a contemporary international setting.

Figure 3 shows the Ten Heavenly Stems and their growth cycle within the Five Elements, and

Figure 4 summarises the seasonal prosperity and decline of the Five Elements.

These diagrams and tables help readers see why a line is considered prosperous, resting, constrained, or in the tomb in a given month.

Finally, the case examples are kept complete. The English edition includes 465 cases, numbered in one-to-one correspondence with the internal numbering of the book. This allows readers to follow the authors’ reasoning step by step, as well as to test those judgments against their own experience.

The English is kept clear and readable for non-native speakers. The text is designed as a working manual, suitable to keep open next to an I Ching chart, lookup table, or online I Ching tool while practising. In total, the four volumes contain approximately 204,000 words, comparable in depth to a full technical manual rather than a short spiritual booklet.

10. Conclusion

“I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored (Zengshan Buyi 增删卜易)” stands at an important junction in the history of Chinese divination. It distils a complex Na Jia tradition into a more coherent and testable framework, while preserving a rich archive of cases that illuminate how Six Lines diviners in the late imperial period understood their craft.

For practitioners, the book offers a structured pathway into Six Lines divination and Wen Wang Gua, built around rules that have been repeatedly checked against experience. For scholars, it provides a dense snapshot of how technical knowledge, empirical observation, and critique of precedent interacted within one strand of late imperial divination culture.

The English edition aims to open this material to a wider readership and to invite further research on Six Lines divination within global conversations about divination, knowledge, and practice. For more information on the English edition, related classics, and modern study tools (including an English-language Chinese Perpetual Calendar), readers can visit ichingstream.com.

In summary, the zengshanbuyi English edition of I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored opens a practical doorway into the Na Jia Six Lines case tradition for readers who do not work with Chinese sources. For more Six Lines study resources and the English-language Chinese Perpetual (Lunar) Calendar, you can visit I Ching Stream. A detailed book description and purchase links for the zengshanbuyi English edition are available on the I Ching Divination – Complete and Restored book page, which you can use alongside this article as you deepen your study and practice.

For readers who would like to explore more work on I Ching divination and the zengshanbuyi English edition, you can also find my academic profile on Academia.edu and follow ongoing essays and updates through the I Ching Stream Substack.