What is yarrow divined by the ancients?

Yarrow is a kind of grass commonly used in ancient divination. With the development of divination technology, by the end of the Warring States period, copper coins, bamboo sticks and stones had been used for divination. Today, people use bamboo instead of yarrow for divination, but it is not as effective as the authentic yarrow divination in China!

In ancient times, yarrow was everywhere, which shows the convenience of divination. It is likely that divination was needed at any time in ancient times. Nowadays, sporadic yarrow can only be found in the barren hills along the border.

Yarrow is a kind of grass stem with white fluff. It is said that it can live for hundreds of years and never die in winter, unlike other grasses, which "come and go with the seasons". "Natural History" said: "You are a thousand years old and have three hundred stems, so you know good or bad." According to legend, Fu used yarrow for divination. In ancient China, 49 yarrow trees were often used for divination. Therefore, the ancients also called yarrow sacred grass.

One of the characteristics of yarrow is the so-called "wine-lowering function". In ancient times, people paid attention to offering sacrifices to ancestors. As long as the wine is poured on the yarrow, the wine can be sucked up at once (because the grass itself is low in water content and covered with fluff, which can absorb water), so the people think that the wine they worship is enjoyed by the ancestors' gods. In this way, yarrow is also regarded as a spiritual thing. Yarrow was originally used by Zhou Wenwang for divination.