Divination

As part of the Daoist(Taoist) religion, there is a way to communicate with the Gods. Using these wooden moon shaped wooden blocks which are rounded on one side and flat on the other, you can ask the Gods a question and the Gods will give you an answer. You drop the blocks on the temple floor, they clatter and eventually take either of three positions:

 Both rounded on the upside, the Gods have said NO

 One rounded up, one flat up, the Gods have said YES

Two flat sides up, the Gods have said MAYBE.

According to one procedure the Gods have to be asked three times and YES has to come up three times to be a valid answer. In another procedure the first time is to ask the Gods if the question can be asked. On this initial attempt the responses are:

YES - go ahead and ask the question
Maybe - reformulate the question
NO - Come back another day.


Anyway, the Gods are in control so you better just listen to them.

So if there is an equal chance of being round or flat side up, then for one attempt there would be:

50% YES     - 2 outcomes out of 4
25% NO      - 1 outcome out of 4
25% Maybe - 1 outcome out of 4

To check this out, I modified my clappers and did 100 trials.

My outcomes were:

AB             - flat sides up     - MAYBE - 27%
AC and BD - one of each      - YES       - 53%
CD             - round sides up - NO        - 20%


so on the day of my trial the Gods were saying yes above the average and didn't want to say NO much. My blocks are actually made out of wood looking plastic so the Gods were just laughing at me, I noticed that in just the 100 trials, the tips of the blocks were chipped, that's got to effect the outcomes, but the Gods are in control so I shouldn't worry about such details.

I had been looking for these clappers since I saw them at a Daoist temple. I finally  found them for sale at a vendor outside a Daoist temple on Ali Shan. They cost me 200NT.

Like most things sold by vendors there is no marked price and the vendor is just daring you to bargain. My solution is to just never buy from vendors. But this was a tough item to find so I just buckled and bought them, screw the bargaining.

In Taiwanese, I think they are called Buah Bui(I'm not sure of the tones because Taiwanese has maybe 7 tones), in Chinese we have:


擲筊            zhíjiǎo(V)    to throw the blocks
筊杯            jiǎobēi(N)   the name of the blocks