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A method for reading the moment

Qi Men Dun Jia (奇門遁甲) is one of the Three Styles (三式) of traditional Chinese divination, beside Tai Yi (太乙) and Liu Ren (六壬). Where BaZi reads a life from the moment of birth, Qi Men interprets a selected moment — in the hour-chart method used here, the hour is laid out across nine palaces, and the doors, stars and spirits that fall into them are read for the matter you asked about. It has long been used for questions of timing and strategy — when to move, which way to turn, whether to wait.

The story it tells about itself. The Yellow Emperor, facing Chi You at Zhuolu, receives the method from the Mystery Lady of the Nine Heavens; his minister Feng Hou sets it down as thousands of charts; Jiang Taigong reduces them to seventy-two, and Zhang Liang of the Han to the eighteen configurations still used today. This is a traditional origin story, not an established historical account.

What the record shows. The name Dun Jia turns up in sixth-century writing — in the poetry of Emperor Jianwen of Liang, and in the Book of Chen — and the editors of the imperial library identify thirteen Dun Jia entries in the bibliography of the Book of Sui, so the art was in circulation by then. Those same editors note that the earlier Han bibliography does not clearly record it. The tradition is also carried by an influential mnemonic verse, the Song of the Old Fisherman of the Misty Waves (煙波釣叟歌), traditionally attributed to the Song period. In the Ming, Dun Jia Yan Yi (遁甲演義), compiled by Cheng Daosheng of Haining, gathered the plates and the readings into one book and was later taken into the imperial library; the Ming astronomical bureau’s own duties included a Liu Ren and Dun Jia calendar.

Our charting and interpretations draw on traditional Qi Men methods. The chart arranges symbols across nine palaces, and the reading interprets them in relation to your question.