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| Qimen Dunjia | |||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 奇門遁甲 | ||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 奇门遁甲 | ||||||
| Literal meaning | Mysterious gates escape technique | ||||||
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Qimen Dunjia is an ancient form ofdivination fromChina. It is still in use inmainland China,Taiwan,Hong Kong,Macau,Malaysia,Singapore and the Chinese diaspora inSoutheast Asia.[citation needed] It is one of the Three Styles (三式;sānshì; 'three styles') of Chinese divination, withDa Liu Ren andTai Yi Shen Shu.[citation needed]
Originally devised to help formmilitary strategy and tactics,[citation needed] Qimen Dunjia was in use as long ago as the period of Chinese history known as theWarring States,[citation needed] and is believed by Chinese scholars to have been used at theBattle of Red Cliffs in the defeat ofCao Cao's ship-borne army.[citation needed] Thebaguazhen (八卦陣, lit. 'Eight Trigrams formation') is one such military tactic derived from Qimen Dunjia.[citation needed]
Liu Bowen is believed to have secured the throne for theMing dynastyEmperor Hongwu by applying Qimen Dunjia to his strategic planning.[citation needed]
Over the centuries of Chinese history, Qimen Dunjia grew in popularity and was expanded to include a number of other types of divination, including medical divination,matchmaking,childbirth,travel, personal fortunes, and today includes contemporary applications, most notably that of business and finance. Today Qimen Dunjia is especially popular in Singapore and other nations of Southeast Asia.[citation needed]
Qimen Dunjia is based onastronomical observations, and consists of various aspects of Chinesemetaphysics, including the doctrines ofyin and yang,five elements, theeight trigrams, the tenHeavenly Stems and the twelveEarthly Branches, as well as the twenty-foursolar terms.
The Qimen Dunjia cosmic board consists of a 3 × 3 magic square of nine palaces (九宮), which includes a Heaven and Earth plate, a spirit plate, eight gates and a star plate. The various symbols rotate around the palaces with eachdouble-hour of the day, making a total of 1,080 different configurations of the Qimen Dunjia cosmic board. These situations (局;jú) are recycled four times per year, and are divided between theYin and Yang halves of the year.
Each type of Qimen Dunjia divination carries its unique set of Use Spirits (用神;yòngshén). For example, medical divination relies mainly upon the star plate. The task of the Qimen Dunjia analyst is to interpret and analyze the meanings of the symbols in relation to questions asked. Any Qimen Dunjia situation may be interpreted or analyzed to respond to a wide variety of questions, or to solve a multitude of problems. Examples of questions include understanding the underlying objective of the other party in a situation, looking for missing objects, and analyzing cause and effects.
Qimen Dunjia is time-sensitive. The analyst makes reference to the configuration of the cosmic board at the time when a question is posed, or for birth times of individuals or corporate entities, such as businesses or nations. At times, the same or very similar configurations of the cosmic board will appear in relation to the same series of questions or problems.
