Tibetan Divination

These paintings are illustrations of the seminal text on Tibetan divination, The White Beryl (Vaidurya Karpo), composed by Sanggye Gyatso (1653–1705). The paintings were commissioned by the Sakya court in the early to mid-eighteenth century and were painted by the Tibetan artist Sonam Peljor (fig. 2). The paintings were prepared to serve as illustrations for the intricate computation of divinations described in The White Beryl.

Divination has played—and still does—a significant role in all levels of Tibetan society. Divinations and various astrological calculations are frequently applied in all parts of life (fig. 3), such as birth, marriage (fig. 4), detecting obstacles, analyzing disease, assessing spiritual progress, and foretelling death. There are various types of auspicious and inauspicious dates, which are marked on every Tibetan calendar, and they are important to know before embarking on significant events or tasks, such as moving to a new house, starting a business, or finding a date for an important event, such as a marriage. The waxing half of Tibetan lunar months is considered in general more auspicious than the waning. Therefore, constructive, positive practices are commonly performed during the first half of the lunar month.

In Tibetan, the term tsi, which is usually translated as “astrology,” refers to astronomy, time calculation, and divination. Tibetan astral sciences are further divided into what is usually translated as “elemental astrology,” or jungtsi, and astronomy/astrology, or kartsi. Jungtsi is also known as Chinese divination, or naktsi, which refers to the system of divination based on primary concepts found in Chinese divination (fig. 5): the relationships formed between the five phases (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) and their various representations, the twelve animal signs (rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, bird, dog, and pig), the trigrams (parkha), and numeric squares (mewa).

The corpus of astrological and divinatory sciences is furthermore referred to as tsuklak, a term that also denotes the sciences as a whole. The word tsuklak covers a broad range of meanings, but most generally it refers to treatises (shastra) of techniques, sciences, morality, and the art of governance.

Origins of Tibetan Divination

Tibetan sciences of the stars are derived from several theoretical contexts. One is the Kalachakra Tantra, an Indian Buddhist tantra that reached Tibet in the eleventh century and which describes the association between the human body and the external world. In the Kalachakra tradition, integrating astronomical and medical knowledge is perceived as facilitating the flourishing of human potential and attainment of well-being. It focuses on the ways in which celestial bodies correlate with and influence the human body. This in turn is based on two fundamental premises. The first is that both the human body and the cosmos are of the nature of time: they are impermanent, and follow cyclical processes of origination, duration, and destruction. The second is that both the human body and the cosmos are composed of the same particles that make up the elements of earth, fire, water, wind, space, and gnosis.1

The first two chapters of the Kalachakra, dealing respectively with the universe (lokadhatu in Sanskrit) and the individual (adhyatma in Sanskrit), demonstrate the Buddhist tantric view of the universe as macrocosm and the individual as its microcosm. The Kalachakra inquiry into the nature of the external world and the individual applies various disciplines such as Buddhist cosmology, astronomy, time measurement, embryology, physiology, botany, psychology, and pharmacology. The Kalachakra Tantra demonstrates the correspondences between the universe and the individual by identifying the properties of the external physical universe in the body of the individual. The aim is to provide an analysis of the natural world, which is viewed as an object of purification and ultimately as a manifestation of the Buddha’s mind.

In addition to the Indian cultural sphere of influence, Chinese influence on Tibetan divination has also been significant. Tibetan sources often refer to China as the “land of divination.” A popular saying in Tibet maintains this connection: “Religious doctrine [cho]) came from India and astrology [tsi] from China.”2

The association between China and divination is documented already in the Tibetan Dunhuang  manuscripts, which are among the earliest extant Tibetan manuscripts, dating from the ninth and tenth centuries, where we find several Tibetan divination texts referring to Confucius (551–479 BCE) as their author. Tibetan sources also present legendary Chinese accounts regarding the origins of divination. According to these legends, as they are redacted in Tibetan sources, the mythical Chinese emperor Fu Xi saw a gold-colored turtle (rubel), which was offered to him by a subject from the coastal region. Upon inspecting it, the patterns of the eight trigrams (parkha in Tibetan, ba gua in Chinese) first arose in his mind. Consequently, the divination system based on the elemental relationships formed by the eight trigrams, the nine numeric squares (mewa), and the twelve-year cycle (lokor junyi) were devised, and treatises were gradually composed by kings, ministers, and learned scholars who had mastered these systems (fig. 5).3

Adaptation into a Buddhist Context

As it adapted into a Tibetan context, Tibetan divination—as well as its visual representations (figs. 6 and 7)—underwent a process of “Buddhization.” Tibetan Buddhist accounts maintain that medicine as well as astrology were taught by Buddha Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism. The astral sciences have been categorized as one of the Buddhist classical sciences, or rikne, specifically, one of the five minor sciences (rikne chungwa)—along with poetry (nyenngak), metrics (debjor), lexicography (ngonjo), and drama (dogar).

It is worth noting that the Tibetan term rikne, which is usually translated as “science,” also means art, culture, or, more generally, a field of knowledge. As described in the Buddhist Mahayana traditions, the study of these fields of knowledge is essential in the path of the bodhisattva’s striving toward omniscience. This omniscience is considered in Buddhist literature both as a means of helping others and a way of knowing oneself.

Tibetan sources distinguish between two strands of Chinese divination teachings: an older strand of Chinese divination (gyatsi nyingma) and a more recent one (gyatsi sarma), which was propagated from the seventeenth century onward.4 In the seventeenth century, during the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent, Sanggye Gyatso, notions taken from Chinese divination as well as from other traditions were synthesized and fully incorporated into a coherent whole consistent with the Tibetan Buddhist worldview. The manuscript examined here is a product of this strand. Sanggye Gyatso notes, however, that the so-called astrological texts from China in general use in Tibet were in fact not written in China, and in all probability were written by Tibetans. Whatever the case may be, the Tibetan texts are often unique variations of Chinese divination.

The categories dealt with are, for example, vitality (sok), body (lu), destiny (wangtang), and luck (lungta). The vitality aspect is the life essence present in the heart of beings; the body element determines physical health; the destiny element governs personal spheres of influence, wealth, property, food, clothing, and descendants; the luck refers to good fortune and good reputation. Some of these categories are closely linked to various healing practices, and indeed, a close connection between healing and divination practices is observable throughout the history of both. Medicine and astrology have been closely interlinked in Tibet theoretically, practically, and institutionally. Both medicine and astrology have been taught together at medical colleges. To this day, Tibetan doctors are required to study astrology as part of their training. The two main Tibetan medical colleges, in Lhasa and Dharamsala, are both called Mentsikhang (Institute of Medicine and Astrology).5

Like Tibetan medicine in general, Tibetan astro-medicine has synthesized elements from a number of different cultures. Yet its vividness seems to be unique. In attempting to explain this vividness, one can perhaps point out the implications of the Buddhist notion of karma. In addition to any deterministic readings into one’s constitution, links with particular heavenly bodies, or any other calculation, it is the karmic factor that may alter, in one way or another, a basic proscribed tendency. At the heart of this mode of understanding lies the notion of “auspicious coincidence” (tendrel), which is connected to the Buddhist notion of the twelve links of dependent origination (Sanskrit: pratityasamutpada) through which past actions influence present and future conditions. Buddhist simultaneous acceptance of medical or astrological determinism, alongside the possibility of humans to alter this given state through positive actions, might be one explanation of the ongoing coexistence of medicine and astrology in Tibetan cultures and Tibetan people’s lives. In the context of Tibetan divinations, predictions are not considered to be deterministic, but cautionary and prescriptive.6 If the outcome is auspicious, no action needs to be taken. If, however, the outcome is negative—cautionary steps are to be taken in order to alleviate the prediction.