Huángdì Tàiyī bāmén nìshùn shēngsǐ jué 黃帝太一八門逆順生死訣
Yellow-Emperor’s Formula of the Reverse-and-Forward Life-and-Death of the Eight Gates of the Great One
About the work
A single-juǎn divinatory manual within the Tàiyī bāmén 太一八門 corpus, focused specifically on the nìshùn 逆順 (reverse-and-forward, i.e. yīn-cycle and yáng-cycle) and shēngsǐ 生死 (life-and-death) determinations of the eight-gates system. Companion to KR5b0291 and KR5b0292.
Abstract
The text is organised as a series of tables for each jiǎ-day:
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Yángdùn (jiǎzǐ wǔ) 陽遁 (甲子午) — Shùnxíng (jiǎ bǐng wù gēng rén) 順行 (甲丙戊庚壬): “Jiǎzǐ yī xiū, jiǎxū sān shāng, jiǎshēn liù kāi, jiǎwǔ bā shēng, jiǎchén yī xiū, jiǎyín sān yín…” 甲子一休，甲戌三傷，甲申六開，甲午八生，甲辰一休，甲寅三寅 — assigning gates numerically: jiǎzǐ = position 1 (xiū gate), jiǎxū = position 3 (shāng gate), jiǎshēn = position 6 (kāi gate), jiǎwǔ = position 8 (shēng gate), jiǎchén = position 1 (xiū gate), jiǎyín = position 3 (with a textual slip yín 寅 for the gate name).
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Yīndùn (jiǎzǐ wǔ) 陰遁 — the yīn cycle, with its reverse-rotation through the gates.
The system allows the practitioner to determine, for each cyclical day, whether departure through a given cardinal direction is shēng (life-favourable) or sǐ (death-foreboding). Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 773, John Lagerwey) treat the text as a calendrical-divinatory supplement to the broader Bāmén corpus.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Vol. 2: 773 (DZ 588, John Lagerwey).
- Kalinowski, Marc. Cosmologie et divination dans la Chine ancienne. Paris: EFEO, 1991.