Lǐ Xūzhōng 李虛中
Style name Chángróng 常容. Eighth-generation descendant of the Northern-Wèi Shìzhōng (Palace Attendant) Lǐ Chōng 李冲. Jìnshì of the early Tang; reached Diànzhōng shìyùshǐ (Imperial Censor) under Yuánhé reign (806-820). Birth and death years not securely recorded; per Hán Yù 韓愈’s tomb-inscription (preserved in the Chānglí wénjí), Lǐ Xūzhōng died during the Yuánhé period.
The conventional founder of late-imperial Chinese xīngmìng (astrological-fate) divination — the methodology of computing personal fate from the gànzhī (heavenly-trunks / earthly-branches) values of birth-year, birth-month, and birth-day. Hán Yù’s tomb-inscription describes Lǐ Xūzhōng’s method: “[He was] most deep in the Wǔxíng shū (Five-Phases books); using the day-stems of the year-month-day at each person’s birth, [reading] the gànzhī (heavenly-stems / earthly-branches) generation-restraint and decay-life and thriving, computed-and-weighed to derive the person’s longevity-or-shortness, nobility-or-baseness, advantage-or-disadvantage — invariably first-determining the year-month [and] never failing one in a hundred-or-two”. This Tang-period three-trunk method (year-month-day) preceded the later Sòng-period bāzì (eight-character) four-trunk method (year-month-day-hour) by some centuries.
Hán Yù’s tomb-inscription does not record that Lǐ Xūzhōng wrote any books; the post-Sòng attribution to him of the Lǐ Xūzhōng mìngshū 李虛中命書 (KR3g0033) is therefore questionable. The Sìkù 提要 of KR3g0033 argues at length that the work in its surviving form is a Sòng-period composition pseudepigraphically attributed to Lǐ Xūzhōng (with annotation pseudepigraphically attributed to Guǐgǔzǐ 鬼谷子, the legendary Warring-States cosmographer-and-strategist). The Sòng-period xīngmìng school evidently invented this attributional scheme to provide ancient authority for their innovations, including the four-trunk bāzì method that distinguishes the Sòng tradition from Lǐ Xūzhōng’s actual three-trunk Tang method.
Despite the attribution-issues, the work in its received form is genuinely the foundational systematic xīngmìng treatise of the late-imperial Chinese tradition.