Chinese Metaphysics

Yin and yang (阴阳, yīnyáng) is the first pair of concepts in the Chinese arts of divination, medicine, and placement — and probably the most misread. Most introductions begin with a list of opposites: dark and light, cold and hot. This page begins where the two characters actually begin: with landscape. The sun in China tracks across the southern sky, so every hill has a bright face and a shaded one, and every east-flowing river has one bank that faces the sun and one that turns from it. From that geographic pair, Chinese thought built a system in which nothing is one-sided, everything contains its opposite, and balance is a movement rather than a compromise. Below: the words’ literal meaning, the classic line that defines the system, what the famous symbol is actually saying, how the sorting works, and where the model still does work in the I Ching, Bazi, and feng shui.

Qi Men Dun Jia (奇门遁甲, also romanized qimen dunjia or shortened to qimen) is one of the classical “three cosmic boards” (San Shi, 三式) of Chinese divination, historically nicknamed the “art of emperors” for its association with military strategy. It takes a chosen moment — its solar term, its day and hour in the stem-branch calendar — and lays that moment out as a nine-palace board of stars, doors and deities, from which the tradition reads which timing and which direction favour the matter at hand. This article explains what the system is, where it came from, how the board is built, and how it differs from the Bazi birth chart and the I Ching oracle; to cast one for yourself, use the free Qi Men Dun Jia calculator.