六壬法教

Introduction

Authorship and Compilation History

The Legendary Attribution: Lu Chunyang, Lü Dongbin, and Chen Tuan

The question "who wrote the Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu?" has no simple answer. Two overlapping legends account for the system's founding, and the Quan Shu inherits both mythologies.

Historical scrutiny complicates both attributions. Chen Tuan's documented contributions focused on cosmological diagrams — the Taijitu (太極圖), the River Chart (河圖), and the Luo Writing (洛書) — rather than on the detailed star-numerology system described in the Quan Shu. Neither the official Song histories nor unofficial biji (筆記, literary notes) from the Song period link Chen Tuan explicitly to a ZWDS text.

The Daoist Canon (Zhengde Daozang, 正統道藏), compiled during the Ming Zhengtong reign (1445), contains no early ZWDS manuscripts under Chen Tuan's name — a significant archival absence given how thoroughly the Canon documented Song Daoist works. The terminology appearing in the Quan Shu, including specific star names and the four-transformation (四化) framework, reflects a level of systematization associated with Ming-dynasty intellectual culture rather than the Five Dynasties or early Song period.

The Contribution of Bai Yuchan (白玉蟾)

One of the few named intermediary contributors is Bai Yuchan (白玉蟾, c. 1134–1229), the celebrated Southern Song Daoist master of the Quanzhen lineage. Tradition attributes to Bai Yuchan the authorship of the Doushu Fawei Lun (斗數發微論, "Essay Elucidating the Subtleties of Star Numerology"), which appears as a prefatory chapter in several classical ZWDS compilations. If authentic, this places documented ZWDS theory firmly in the late Southern Song (12th–13th century), roughly two centuries after Chen Tuan.

The Ming Dynasty Compilation: Pan Xiyin and the Nanyang Tang Edition

The oldest surviving printed editions of the Quan Shu all date to the Wanli period (萬曆, 1573–1620) of the Ming dynasty. Three principal woodblock-printed editions emerged during this window:

The Nanyang Tang edition — compiled by Pan Xiyin (潘希尹) of Jiangxi, with editorial review by Yang Yiyu (楊宜裕) — is the most comprehensive of the three. Its colophon reads: "Jiangxi Fuzhenzi Pan Xiyun supplemented and compiled; Min Guanxi descendant Yang Yiyu examined; Shulin Baohutang printed." Pan Xiyin did not claim original authorship; rather, he described his role as gathering, annotating, and supplementing existing fragmentary manuscripts under the honorific title of Chen Tuan, framing the text as the recovered teachings of the ancient master.

Classical Text Timeline

Structure and Chapter Overview

The Nanyang Tang edition of the Quan Shu — the most complete surviving Ming woodblock — is organized into seven volumes (七卷). Earlier and later manuscript traditions sometimes describe a "four-volume" (四卷) arrangement, reflecting different editorial organizations of the same underlying material. The seven-volume structure of the Nanyang Tang edition can be understood as expanding what other traditions compress into four volumes, with the division lines shifting based on where compilers chose to break the material.

The Four-Volume (四卷) Manuscript Tradition

The "four-volume" description appears most commonly in manuscript copies and oral-lineage references that predate or run parallel to the Ming printed editions. This arrangement broadly maps:

The Seven-Volume Nanyang Tang Structure

The printed Nanyang Tang edition expands this into seven volumes by separating the foundational odes (vol. 1–2), methodological procedures for chart construction (vol. 3), thematic relationship analysis chapters (vol. 4), life-pattern classification (vol. 5), historical chart illustrations (vol. 6), and timing consultation templates (vol. 7). This expansion reflects the editorial ambition to create a practitioner's comprehensive reference rather than a scholar's condensed theoretical text.

Key Classical Passages

The Quan Shu is structured around a series of classical rhyming odes (fu, 賦) and essays that encode foundational doctrine in memorable, teachable form. These odes served both as mnemonic devices for students and as authoritative doctrinal statements. The three most important are the Tai Wei Fu, the Xing Xing Fu, and the Gu Sui Fu.

The Tai Wei Fu (太微賦) — Supreme Subtlety Ode

The Tai Wei Fu is the canonical opening ode of the Quan Shu and the most cited classical passage in ZWDS scholarship. "Tai Wei" (太微) refers to the Purple Subtlety Enclosure — the central stellar region of the heavens — and by extension to the profound subtlety of the interpretive art. The ode establishes core axioms about star nature, palace authority, and the principles of reading a chart.

The Xing Xing Fu (形性賦) — Character and Nature Ode

The Xing Xing Fu addresses the physical and psychological signatures of the major stars — how each star shapes the embodied person: their appearance, temperament, talents, and behavioral tendencies. This ode was central to the classical practice of integrating face-reading (Mian Xiang) with ZWDS chart analysis.

The Gu Sui Fu (骨髓賦) — Bone Marrow Ode

The Gu Sui Fu — "Bone Marrow Ode" — is the most practically dense of the three canonical odes, encoding hundreds of specific star-combination judgments in rhymed couplets. Its title conveys the idea that these are the deepest, most essential ("marrow-level") principles of chart reading. The Quan Shu includes the Gu Sui Fu with extensive annotations (骨髓賦注解), expanding each couplet with interpretive commentary.

Textual Transmission and Lineages

Imperial Era Secrecy (Ming–Qing)

From the Ming dynasty onward, Zi Wei Dou Shu was appropriated by the imperial Bureau of Astronomy (欽天監) as a restricted instrument of state. Practitioners outside the court worked from manuscript copies — hand-copied fragments of the Quan Shu, Quan Ji, and Jielan supplemented by oral Kou Jue (口訣, rhymed verbal instructions) passed directly from teacher to student. This secrecy created parallel transmission streams that diverged significantly over generations: one court-based tradition emphasizing standardization, and multiple private lineages developing specialized interpretive emphases.

The Qing dynasty's Bureau of Astronomy maintained an inner tradition of ZWDS practice specifically for computing the Emperor's fate chart. According to one account preserved in Taiwanese lineage lore, two volumes of ZWDS classics were kept in the Palace — one representing the Sanhe methodology, the other Sihua. The fall of the Qing in 1912 brought these formerly classified texts into a more publicly accessible domain.

Regional Lineage Variation: Minnan and Taiwan

The geographic transmission of ZWDS followed the cultural corridors of southeastern China — particularly Fujian (福建) and its Minnan (閩南) cultural sphere — into Taiwan. Fujian masters held strong Sanhe (三合) school traditions, emphasizing the triadic relationships between non-adjacent palaces. When Fujian and mainland practitioners relocated to Taiwan, particularly following 1949, these lineage streams mingled with each other and with oral traditions that had already established roots in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period.

Taiwan Masters and Post-1949 Systematization

After the Republic of China's relocation to Taiwan in 1949, key masters who had preserved ZWDS lineages through the turbulence of the mainland's political transformation became foundational teachers of Taiwan's metaphysical community. The 1960s saw the emergence of ZWDS teaching circles in northern Taiwan, centered around masters including Yan Ruotang (嚴若堂), Zhu Shanshou (朱善壽), and Kang Guodian (康國典). These figures drew from both the printed Quan Shu tradition and oral lineages.

A particularly significant development was the transmission of "Flying Star" (飛星) methodology. In the 1960s, a master from Hainan Island — having retreated from the mainland via Dachen Island — transmitted an esoteric flying-star method of ZWDS to teacher Zhou Qinghe (周清河), initiating a lineage that would eventually become one of Taiwan's most active teaching traditions. Zhou's students, including later teachers like Liang Ruoyu (梁若瑜), helped popularize the Sihua Flying Stars method through publications and open teaching.

Zhang Yaowen (張耀文), a master from Fujian appearing in Taiwan in the 1960s, claimed to be the thirteenth-generation heir of the "Transparent Sect" (透派), asserting access to palace-based oral traditions not fully encoded in any printed edition of the Quan Shu — a claim that has generated both scholarly interest and skepticism.

Modern Scholarly Editions and Commentaries

Post-1949 Taiwan produced the first wave of modern critical editions of the classical texts. These included typeset reprints of the Nanyang Tang woodblock, comparison tables across the three Ming editions, and original commentary works that systematically annotated the Tai Wei Fu, Xing Xing Fu, and Gu Sui Fu. By the 1980s and 1990s, Hong Kong and Singapore publishers had disseminated these editions widely across the Chinese-speaking world, and translations and adaptations began appearing in English, Vietnamese, Japanese, and other languages.

On mainland China, following the post-Cultural Revolution revival of traditional studies in the 1980s, the three Ming-dynasty ZWDS editions became subjects of academic bibliographic interest. The Naige Bunko copy of the Nanyang Tang Quan Shu, preserved in Japan, was re-photographed and circulated among Chinese scholars, enabling the first systematic comparison of the three Wanli-period editions.

The Text in Modern Practice

The Quan Shu as Canonical Authority

Despite — and in part because of — the unresolved questions about its authorship, the Quan Shu functions in modern ZWDS practice as a canonical reference point: the text that all schools must position themselves in relation to, whether they claim to follow it closely, supplement it with oral tradition, or depart from it in favor of a specialized methodology.

Practitioners across schools regularly cite the Tai Wei Fu and Gu Sui Fu passages to anchor interpretation. When a controversial reading is proposed — for example, how to assess a chart where adversarial stars occupy the Ming Palace — the classical odes serve as the court of appeal. Schools that diverge from the Quan Shu's explicit judgments typically frame their departure as "the oral lineage teaching that completes what the printed text only hints at," thereby maintaining the text's authority even while extending beyond it.

The Quan Shu vs. Other ZWDS Texts

Study Recommendations: A Structured Approach

For students of ZWDS engaging with the Quan Shu, the following sequence reflects how serious scholars in the Taiwan-lineage tradition approach the classical texts:

1. Foundation first — the twelve palaces and fourteen major stars: Before engaging the classical odes, establish a solid command of palace function and the 14 major star natures. This site's Zi Wei Dou Shu Palaces Guide and the Five Arts ZWDS module at Five Arts: Zi Wei Dou Shu provide this grounding.
2. Read the Tai Wei Fu slowly: The opening ode of the Quan Shu should be read multiple times across different stages of learning. Its axioms become progressively deeper as practical chart-reading experience accumulates. Memorization is traditionally expected of serious students.
3. Work through the Xing Xing Fu star by star: The Character and Nature Ode is best studied alongside actual chart analysis — matching each classical star description against the charts of known persons to test and internalize the characterizations.
4. Engage the Gu Sui Fu with a commentary guide: The Bone Marrow Ode is the most practically dense of the three canonical odes. It is best studied using a modern annotated edition from a reputable school, as standalone reading of the classical Chinese without commentary leads to misinterpretation.
5. Cross-reference across the three Ming editions: Once foundational ode study is complete, comparing how the Quan Shu, Quan Ji, and Jielan handle the same material reveals genuine textual variants that have real interpretive consequences — and teaches the student to think critically rather than defer to any single edition.
6. Situate within a living lineage: The classical texts are not self-sufficient. The oral Kou Jue tradition, the school-specific activation sequences for the Four Transformations, and the lineage-specific judgment criteria for complex chart configurations are not fully encoded in any printed edition. Engagement with a teaching lineage — even through contemporary masters' published works — is essential to move from textual reading to practical discernment.

Significance and Ongoing Influence