Want to be a fortune teller? Read the classic fortune-telling books

Today's Chinese fortune tellers are mainly practicing basing upon their study of several fortune-telling books written by astrologers in ancient China.

"Songs on Weighing Bones" by Yuan Tian-gang

This is a very handy and applicable fortune telling method. Famous astrologer Yuan Tian-gang specified the weight of each year, month, date and time of birth. By looking up the values corresponding to your birthday. You can calculate your total weight. He also provided a series of poems that are general descriptions of fates corresponding to different total weights. So you can simply read out the poem that corresponds to your weight. However, this is only a general description of one's fate. This Wikipedia page illustrates this fortune telling method in Chinese.

"Huang Ji Jing Shi" by Shao Yong

"Yuan Hai Zi Ping"

This is the first complete and system book talking about fortune telling through "Four Pillars of Destiny". It was written in Song Dynasty by Xu Sheng according to the fortune-telling Master Xu Ziping's fortune-telling methods. Full text is available in Chinese.

" 'Zi Ping Zhen Quan' Annotations"

A very easy-to-understand book on fortune-telling written by Xu Lewu in 1936. The original "Zi Ping Zhen Quan" is a book on Four-Pillar fortune-telling written by Shen Xiaozhan of Ming Dynasty.

"San Ming Tong Hui"

Writtten by Wan Minying of Ming Dynasty.

"Qian-Li Ming Gao"

Written by Wei Qianli in 1934.

The last four books give very concrete, practical and applicable guidance to fortune-telling.

However, I have not found English versions of these books available.

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