L.01MANTIC ARTS LIBRARY
Thirty-four core dossiers across nine families. Explore principles, formation, primary texts, school differences and the limits of evidence.
Zhānmèng yǔ Jiěmèng Shū · Dream divination and dream manuals
Interpretation of dream people, animals, objects, actions, colors, directions or puns through symbol, inversion and analogy, spanning court office, religious experience and popular dictionaries.
Cèzì, Chāizì yǔ Xiàngzì · Chinese character divination
A contextual art beginning from a written, selected or encountered Chinese character and analyzing components, added or removed strokes, shape, sound and meaning.
Wǔzhào Bǔfǎ yǔ Dūnhuáng Shìxiàng Zhān · Five-omen methods and Dunhuang topical divination
A family preserved in Dunhuang fragments using five signs, phase-generative numbers, invocations and topical statements for illness, marriage, lost objects, travelers and other daily questions.
Qiúqiān, Qiānshī yǔ Jiǎobēi · Divination lots, oracle poems and moon blocks
A common temple and popular religious practice drawing numbered lots or casting crescent blocks. Within the relevant faith tradition, results are interpreted as divine responses through poems, allusions or affirmative-negative-laughing signs.
Chènwěi, Túchèn yǔ Yùyán Wénxiàn · Apocrypha, prophetic charts and prediction literature
Political prophecy through riddles, mandate tokens, images, scriptural correspondence and historical cycles; a major object for the study of legitimacy and textual rewriting.
CONNECTED KNOWLEDGE
Each path connects a family, shared questions and related fields for comparative reading, without claiming proven historical transmission.
02KNOWLEDGE FAMILIES
From oracle bones, yarrow and numerical hexagrams to Hetu-Luoshu and Najia: the symbolic, temporal and numerical languages shared by many later systems.
Distinct traditions of inference built around hexagrams, lines, correlative roles, oracular texts and large-scale models of time.
Taiyi, Qimen, Liuren and related methods organize time and space through nine-palace models, cosmic boards, agents and calendrical rules.
Traditional interpretive systems organizing life narratives through birth time, stems and branches, palaces or celestial positions.
From state astrology to winds, cloud forms and phenology: how observations became political and human interpretation.
Approaches to dwellings, graves, settlements and landscapes through form, orientation, timing and spatial order.
Historical systems of classification and analogy based on appearance, bones, voice and movement, studied together with their risks of bias.
Traditions matching activities with calendrical days, seasonal nodes, the Twelve Officers and other almanac factors.
Lots, moon blocks, character analysis, dream books and local quick methods reveal the diversity of divination in everyday life.
03Scope and classification
No closed, universally accepted list covers every Chinese mantic art. Names overlap, divide, disappear, acquire pseudonymous authors and are reinvented. This atlas centers identifiable texts, living systems and significant branches, with its scope and evidence levels made explicit.
Supported by datable material, catalogs, objects or verifiable text.
How a lineage or book tells its story; not automatically a modern historical finding.
A culturally meaningful origin narrative that does not establish a date.
Disagreement over author, composition, genealogy or algorithmic relationship.
04Branch index and extended dossiers
These names remain in a traceable branch index. They become independent dossiers only when rules, dates and relationships can be described with adequate evidence.
Six Lines: Huozhulin, Wenwangke, Huangjin Ce, hidden lines, advancing-retreating signs and timing schools
Qimen: rotating, flying, split-term, intercalary, Maoshan, hourly, daily and selection approaches
Liuren: lesson-pattern, correlative, case-based, Golden Formula and the genealogically uncertain Lesser Liuren
Fate calculation: nayin luming, Ziping pattern, strength, climatic adjustment, spirits, Taiyi natal methods, nine-palace annual movement and hand mnemonics
Astral nativities: Qintang, Guolao, celestial-office planets, Seven Governors and Four Auxiliaries, animal-star and lodge traditions
Fengshui: form, Sanhe, Sanyuan, Xuankong, Flying Stars, Eight Mansions, living and burial approaches and compass layers
Physiognomy: face, bone, hand, voice, gait, complexion and moles, with cross-cultural origins marked where needed
Miscellaneous methods: hidden-object guessing, inverse puncture, emptiness, animal calls, bodily signs, anomalies, board games, coins, dominoes and dice
