Guanyin fortune stick
12
Upper stick
Bad luck leaves and good luck comes, only a step apart.
For now you keep good company and come down from the hills.
If the tiger or the rabbit brings good news,
the bustle of your ambitions turns at once to ease.
jadealmanac.com
The woodcutter Wu Ji is the usual story for this stick, taken from the novel Investiture of the Gods. Carrying firewood into the city, he accidentally struck and killed a gatekeeper and was sentenced to death. Allowed home to care for his mother until the sentence fell due, he went for help to the old man he had met fishing on the river, Jiang Ziya. Jiang made him his disciple and had him lie hidden in a pit under a spell, so that even King Wen's divination showed him dead. Wu Ji survived, was found alive, and later became a general in the war against the last Shang king. A death sentence turned into a career is the image's fortune hidden in misfortune exactly. Master Sean Chan's edition names a different tale, Shen Baoxu weeping at the court of Qin to save his state.
Obstruction leaving and peace arriving names two hexagrams of the Book of Changes, the blocked and the open. A hand's span apart means the reversal is very close.
Coming down out of the mountains with a gentleman suggests leaving seclusion in good company. Temple readers see a helpful ally who appears just as you return to public life.
The tiger and the rabbit are signs of the zodiac, read as years, months or days of those signs, or as people born under them. Good news is expected through that timing or those people.
Resolve made while busy turns business into ease. The usual reading is that a firm decision, taken in the middle of the rush, is what lets the pressure drop.
否去泰来咫尺间
暂交君子出于山
若逢虎兔佳音信
立志忙中事即闲
Seven characters a line, as printed in the BW Monastery edition.
Sources for the story: https://www.k366.com/guanyin/28853.htm; https://services.shen88.cn/chouqian/guanyin-12.html; https://www.masterseanchan.com/guanyin-oracle/lot-12/; https://ask101.tw/result/12; https://www.fatekeep.com/blog/3640.
Optional: the temple way
At a temple the stick is not yours until two moon blocks agree: one flat side up and one round side up, a holy cup.
Stick 12, "Fortune Hidden in Misfortune", is a upper stick, a favorable stick. Trade hemp for silk, with a thread tied round two feet; to see it plainly, good fortune comes out of trouble.
Success.
Gains on investment; delay business deals.
Do good first and the work succeeds; effort brings grades.
Draw another stick , or for a straight yes or no, throw the moon blocks
The verse follows the BW Monastery edition of the Guanyin set; the English rendering and reading are Jade Almanac's own. A drawn stick is a tradition and a prompt for reflection, not advice about health, money or the law.
