The necessity and process of ancient divination

In ancient times, especially in the Spring and Autumn Period, a country used divination to solve any greater doubts, and this work was undertaken by specialized people. The soothsayers will use a quiet room exclusively and have a complete set of rituals (that is, rituals), such as bathing, burning incense and some prayers.

There are many methods of divination, such as plum blossom easy counting, six-hexagram prediction, Taoist magic, four-column prediction, plate arrangement, three books and so on. Commonly used methods are copper coins, tortoise shells, yarrow and so on.

Each method has its own characteristics. For example, the change of copper coins is Liu Yao's prediction. Six copper coins are used to change Yin and Yang, thus forming a divinatory image, and then solving it. Another example is the tortoise shell, which reads the corresponding information according to the cracks on the tortoise shell, so as to make judgments and explanations. However, they will always be the same as their ancestors, that is, the characters and symbols in the Book of Changes will not deviate from the 8864 hexagrams, nor will they deviate from the 384 hexagrams. Only after divination, there will be different interpretations according to different divination methods, and different answers will be given because of people's understanding of hexagrams.