Guanyin fortune stick

84

Lower stick

Guanyin fortune stick 84: The Cold Fish Out of Water

What good is it to lose your virtue chasing a name?
I fear that good fortune may turn to bad.
Drunk on wine, you cannot tell where you are headed,
dreaming in a haze beneath the shade of green pines.

jadealmanac.com

The verdict

A cold fish out of water, good but flawed; if you ask about new plans, better not to start them.

What it says to you

A fish lifted out of cold water has nothing to swim in, and the poem adds a second picture: someone drunk under the pines, dozing, unsure which way is home. Both warn about the same thing, losing your footing while chasing reputation. Something that looks fortunate could turn on you, and the stick is blunt that this is a bad time to launch anything. The honest advice is to stay where you are. Do not move house, switch jobs, or start the scheme. Sober up, in whatever sense applies, and look at what you would be trading your good character for. Keep the water you already have.

The story behind the stick

Editions agree on Zhuangzi Testing His Wife, a Ming story retold in the anthology Wonders Old and New. The philosopher Zhuangzi met a widow fanning her husband's grave dry because she had promised not to remarry until the soil dried. Wondering whether his own wife would be any different, he feigned death. A handsome young prince of Chu, in the Ming story a phantom Zhuangzi conjured himself, came to mourn and soon courted the widow. On their wedding night he collapsed and said only the brain of a fresh corpse could save him, so she took an axe to her husband's coffin. Zhuangzi sat up, and she hanged herself in shame. The story fits a lower stick about losing virtue for a name: a test built on deceit turned good into ruin for everyone in it.

Line by line

1. Losing virtue for the sake of a name asks what reputation is worth if character pays for it. Readers understand it as a warning against cutting moral corners to look good.

2. Good fortune turning to bad is the stick's central fear. Temple readers hear it as a caution that something currently going well could reverse if handled with greed or deceit.

3. Too drunk to know where you are going pictures judgment lost. Readers apply it literally to drink and loosely to any intoxication: infatuation, ambition, a scheme that has gone to your head.

4. Dreaming hazily in green pine shade is the image of someone asleep in a pleasant spot while time passes. Readers take it as complacency and confusion, and advise staying where you are.

The original verse

因名丧德如何事
切恐吉中变化凶
酒醉不知何处去
青松影里梦朦胧

Seven characters a line, as printed in the BW Monastery edition.

Sources for the story: zhouyi.cc Guanyin lot 84: https://www.zhouyi.cc/lingqian/guanyin/5467.html; buyiju.com Guanyin lot 84: https://www.buyiju.com/guanyin/84.html; ttlingqian.com Guanyin lot 84 (cites Wonders Old and New): https://www.ttlingqian.com/guanyin/84.html; masterseanchan.com Guanyin oracle lot 84.

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.

Confirm with the moon blocks

About stick 84

Is Guanyin stick 84 good or bad?

Stick 84, "The Cold Fish Out of Water", is a lower stick, a cautionary stick. A cold fish out of water, good but flawed; if you ask about new plans, better not to start them.

What does Guanyin stick 84 say about love?

Not the time to make moves; keep things steady.

What does Guanyin stick 84 say about money?

Do not start new ventures now.

What does Guanyin stick 84 say about work?

Stay put; changes now could backfire.

Draw another stick , or for a straight yes or no, throw the moon blocks

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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.