What is divination?

Divination is the collective name of the official Confucian theology, divination books and latitude books in ancient China. Divination is an important social trend of thought prevailing in Qin and Han dynasties and an important part of traditional culture. Shu Wei is a general term for Wei, Hou, Tu and Chen since Qin and Han Dynasties.

Among them, a large number of records about myths and folk culture are preserved, which is also an important link of China's comprehensive ideological and cultural movement and has important reference value for studying China's ideology and culture. Prophecy is a code word fabricated by Confucianism in Qin and Han dynasties, which indicates good or bad luck. Later, China folk developed into temples or Taoist temples to pray for God and divination, and gradually simplified it to pray for a sign.

Extended data

Divination had a great influence on politics, social life, ideology and scholarship in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and gradually declined in the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty. As divination was artificially created, it could be used by some people to spread political predictions of regime change, and the rulers gradually realized the danger, which was repeatedly banned after Wei and Jin Dynasties. After Yang Di banned the destruction, a large number of books of Chen Wei were lost.

Divination is full of strong theological superstition, which doomed it to be unable to keep pace with Confucian classics for a long time, and was soon stripped out of Confucian classics. But divination is not all absurd, it also contains many ancient natural science knowledge such as astronomy, calendar and geography.

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