Ancient China in Context
Ventures
The First Chinese Divination Manual
E Bruce Brooks and A Taeko Brooks

The Japanese Sinologist Naitô Torajirô proposed in 1923 that behind the present 64-hexagram Yi ("The Book of Changes") there lay, still embedded in the text, an earlier and simpler 32-pentagram divination text. His suggestion was largely ignored by later scholars, but that precursor text does seem to be still visible, though only in part, within the present Yi. This book is a reconstruction of the pentagram text. The whole system can be seen in outline, though few pentagrams can be entirely reconstructed. The world of the 32 pentagrams is quite different from that of our present Yi. It is sub-elite, and reflects the worries of the commercial trader, and the concerns of the village headman. This is a stratum of classical China about which we are otherwise very little informed. For one thing, it is interesting to see that such things as sacrifice and marriage, both of major concern to the elite, are absent in the pentagram text. It is practical rather than ritual in character.

The later hexagram expansion sees life and its dangers from the standpoint of a ruler, aware of a historical past, and including the calendrical and geographical symbolism that are common at the elite level of classical China. What both have in common is what our title calls "Ventures" - will this campaign, or this civic improvement, or this life, turn out all right?

No one, and no god, knows the future. What Biblical prophecy and Chinese divination alike address is rather the present in depth. Here we are, at the beginning, going forward. What will be the end?

• Cover
• Front Matter
  • Halftitle, Title Page, Dedication
  • Preface
  • Contents Page
• 1. The Recovery Process
• 2: The 32 Pentagrams as a System
• 3: The Hexagram Expansion
• End Matter
  • Works Cited
  • Romanization Tables
  • Subject Index

The pentagram proposal was first presented to the scholarly world at the ICANAS conference in Paris 2001. Here is that paper.

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