Divination, IT and counting skills: an exploration into present-day practices of the Book of the Palm

Dans le cadre de la AAS-in-Asia Conference, Doshisha University, Kyoto, 24-27 juin 2016, participation de Stéphanie Homola au panel « Divination and the Body in China and Japan », avec une intervention intitulée : « Divination, IT and counting skills: an exploration into present-day practices of the Book of the Palm ».

Résumé

This paper will analyze how a fate computation technique using the hand that can be traced back to the late Ming is being used and transmitted in today’s China. The Book of the Palm (Yizhangjing 一掌經) is a divinatory handbook that combines the technical device of hand mnemonics with a Buddhist terminology of prognostication. Although lay people can use this method to understand and improve their lot in the repeating cycle of birth, life and death, the text emphasizes that it was primarily intended to Buddhist monkhood, either to know if one was fated to be a monk or to help monks follow the Buddhist path. Whereas textual history can help understand how Buddhist and Taoist concepts and practices involving the hand intertwined in this manual, anthropological fieldwork among present-day practitioners can help us understand how the method that is often described very allusively, actually works and in which contexts it is used nowadays.
This presentation will examine how such action-oriented devices are implemented both in daily life and in specialized contexts. In particular, it will show how counting skills involved in Yizhangjing practices are part of a more general proficiency in Yijing’s eight trigrams (bagua) divination and “eigth signs” (bazi) horoscopic method. It will also explore the role of visual devices such as hand diagrams in the transmission of knowledge. Thus, this paper will show how new technologies are changing the way the Yizhangjing method is being used and transmitted, as handwritten hand diagrams and oral transmission give way to specialized websites and software.

Date

• 25 juin 2016, 17h-18h50

Lieu

• Doshisha University, , Shikokan (SK), 1F, 105
  Kyoto, Japon

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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