Start here
What Is Chinese Metaphysics?
A practical map of the traditions grouped under Chinese metaphysics, and how to study them without flattening their differences.
6 min readTHE FIELD NOTES
Learn the map
before the method.
Start with the shared ideas, then follow a specific system. Each guide keeps Chinese terms visible and points back to sources.
START HERE
Start here
Start here
What Does Xuanxue Mean?
Why the historical term Xuanxue is narrower than the modern English umbrella phrase Chinese metaphysics.
5 min readFOUNDATIONS
Foundations
Foundations
Yin and Yang: A Relational Framework
The paired terms yin and yang describe changing relations, not two fixed substances or a simple good-versus-evil split.
5 min readFoundations
The Five Elements in Chinese Thought
What wuxing means, why Five Elements is the common English label, and when Five Phases is more precise.
6 min readCALENDARS & SYMBOLS
Calendars & symbols
Calendars & symbols
Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, Explained
A beginner's guide to the ten Heavenly Stems, twelve Earthly Branches, and the cycle they form together.
6 min readCalendars & symbols
The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle (Gan-Zhi)
How the sixty stem-branch pairs mark years, months, days, and double-hours in traditional calendars.
5 min readCalendars & symbols
Solar Terms and the BaZi Calendar
Why BaZi month boundaries follow solar terms rather than the first day of the lunar month.
6 min readMETHODS
Methods
Methods
What Is BaZi? The Four Pillars of Destiny
How a birth moment is represented by four stem-branch pairs, and what a chart can and cannot establish.
7 min readMethods
BaZi vs. the Chinese Zodiac
The year-animal cycle and the Four Pillars use related calendar symbols but answer different kinds of questions.
5 min readMethods
What Is the I Ching (Yijing)?
A guide to the Book of Changes as a classical text, a commentarial tradition, and a source for divination methods.
7 min readMethods
How I Ching Hexagrams Work
Learn how trigrams, six-line hexagrams, changing lines, and textual interpretation fit together.
6 min readMethods
What Is Feng Shui?
An introduction to feng shui as a varied historical practice concerned with sites, buildings, direction, and time.
6 min readMethods
Form and Compass Approaches to Feng Shui
A first look at two broad ways practitioners study the shape of a place and its directional or temporal patterns.
6 min readMethods
Chinese Divination Methods: A Beginner's Map
Compare the inputs and procedures of yarrow-stalk divination, Liuyao, Meihua Yishu, and Xiao Liuren.
7 min readMODERN PERSPECTIVES
Modern perspectives
Modern perspectives
Can BaZi Predict the Future?
Separate accurate chart calculation, traditional interpretation, personal meaning, and evidence for prediction.
6 min read