求籤
FORTUNE STICKS
hold a question — then shake the oracle
press and hold — then shake to agitate the sticks
THE READING
解籤
問籤之禮
THE RITE OF ASKING
一
Hold the question
Steady the mind and name one true question — not many. The oracle answers the heart you bring, not the words you say aloud.
二
Shake the cylinder
Tilt the bamboo 籤筒 and shake, evenly, without grabbing. Let the sticks climb and clatter until, of their own accord, one works its way free.
三
Read the number
One stick falls. Its number is your 籤 — the poem the day has drawn for you from the canon. No re-shaking to prefer another.
四
Cast the moon blocks
Throw the crescent 筊杯. One face up, one down — 聖筊, the blocks agree — and the answer stands. Then read the verse, slowly.
籤詩
ON THE ORACLE
Kau Cim is older than any of the temples that keep it. A cylinder of numbered bamboo, a rack of paired poems, and a person with a question they already half-know the shape of.
籤不占命，籤照心
The stick does not decide your fate. It hands you a small, strange poem and lets you find your own life inside it — the fortune, the wealth, the love, the health, the work. What you were leaning toward becomes visible, phrased as weather and rivers and moons.
These forty-eight verses are composed fresh, in the old grammar of frost and spring and the returning tide. Shake honestly, and read what falls.
四十八籤
THE CANON · FORTY-EIGHT STICKS
DRAW ANY STICK TO READ ITS FORTUNE