This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
Among China’s many traditional arts of divination, character divination (测字) is a very important one, commonly known as fortune-telling by characters. The person seeking a reading writes down a character, and the fortune-teller can infer unknown matters from it; those of great skill are extremely accurate. Below is another method of character divination. Take a look.
1. It becomes 〝甲〞 (jiǎ)
People of this type have keen powers of observation and special talents, and may strive all their lives in pursuit of a single thing. They like to curb the strong and help the weak, and to fight injustice. They long to achieve something in society and among people, and to be their leaders. They are impulsive, authoritative and self-confident, have a sense of justice, strive ceaselessly to better themselves, love the limelight, and like to make decisions for others and give orders.
They are concerned with power, are domineering, control space and territory, deny weaknesses and flaws, are full of energy and crave excitement. They like to control the big picture and delegate to others, but do not like to be controlled. They protect and support their friends, family and subordinates.
They find it hard to take others’ advice and would rather be respected than liked. They are strong, confident and decisive, and take action at once to solve problems. They are well suited to pioneering, adventurous work, because their drive to move forward is quite pronounced.
Personality tendencies: extroverted, proactive, optimistic, impulsive, autocratic, with a sense of justice. Emotionally their lives may be relatively plain. Their circumstances in youth may have been rather hard, so they mostly keep a calm frame of mind; the same is true in love: even in the throes of passion, reason outweighs feeling.
2. It becomes 〝由〞 (yóu)
In a group, people of this type are usually the talents everyone can trust, rely on and value. They have a strong sense of responsibility and attach importance to their own morals and values, but they like the limelight and are somewhat conceited. They long for success in their careers, are goal-oriented, care about their self-image, and want to be recognized, noticed and admired. They can respond appropriately at every moment and are good at seizing every opportunity in their determination to succeed. They long to be affirmed, praised and envied by others.
Such people are well suited to stable, regular work, because they prefer to proceed steadily and surely.
Personality tendencies: extroverted, proactive and sociable. They focus on results rather than process, often neglect their own feelings, and hold to their goals, getting annoyed when they fail to reach them. They push themselves and so seem rather impatient; sometimes, for the sake of efficiency, they sacrifice perfection and take shortcuts. Energetic, devoted to work and striving hard for success to win status and praise, they sometimes sacrifice feelings, marriage, family or friends for career success, reputation and wealth. They are admired, capable and outstanding people.
Falling in love with them is best of all, because they take good care of people and are faithful to their partners, without complicated relationships with the opposite sex. But some people think they are ideologically fastidious, and being with them often means that, because they are so busy with work, normal courtship is impossible, so emotional separation easily occurs.
3. It becomes 〝申〞 (shēn)
People of this type are introverted, passive, optimistic, easygoing and compliant. They usually come across as friendly, kind and good with people, and are very popular in groups. They long for everyone to live in peace, fear causing conflict, fear offending others and fear being caught in the middle. They do not compete for fame or gain; they are gentle by nature, at peace with the world, love nature and are relaxed and easygoing, often giving the impression of being lazy, lacking personality, unhurried and indifferent.
But because of their character, they easily delay things, and others find them passive and indecisive. Although they do not like to give orders to others, when others give them orders they become resentful and stubborn. They have good skills in coordinating affairs and are very good at reading people’s expressions. However, women of this type put marriage and love first, which limits their horizons; the men are so popular that they are prone to affairs.
4. It becomes 〝田〞 (tián)
People of this type like to think and pursue knowledge, long to know more than others and understand faster, and like to use their wisdom and theories to get the better of others. They are calm, quick-witted, highly analytical and tireless in learning, good at handling problems rationally and logically while detaching their emotions, and do not like their space to be disturbed.
Personality tendencies: introverted, passive and self-centered; they like to think and focus on investigation, like to seek solitude and do not like their space to be disturbed. They are not good at saying nice things to others, and like to solve problems alone or to plan and carry out a project alone. They like to think, observe and search for the meaning of life on their own, and are people of strong understanding, analytical, curious and insightful. In love they are relatively conservative, but their success rate is actually higher, and they have almost no romantic entanglements or affairs.
5. It becomes 〝旧〞 (jiù)
People of this type are quite independent and unconventional; their life plans are of the “fighting alone” kind. They are very confident of achieving their plans, so they like to hear others’ praise. They long to be protected and cared for, and are utterly loyal, but suspicious and overanxious. They constantly feel the need to guard against being used or framed, so they like to seek the protection of authority, yet they distrust authority; so deep in their hearts fear and unease often lie hidden, and they lack a sense of security about people and things.
Personality tendencies: introverted, proactive, conservative and loyal. They focus on potential harm, danger and threats. They tend to magnify dangers and disasters and are suspicious by nature, not trusting others easily, yet deep in their hearts they want to be appreciated and affirmed by others. They often ask themselves whether they have done something wrong, because they fear being blamed for making mistakes.
They demand fairness and expect what they get to match what they give, and usually take things too seriously. But they are loyal, trustworthy and hardworking people. In love they like to be novel and different from others, and are therefore not very settled. And when in love they do not care much about their partner’s moods, because they are often absorbed in their own emotions and neglect the other person.
6. It becomes 〝白〞 (bái)
People of this type have a strong sense of self and unique views on beauty. They do not blindly follow fashion, have fairly high self-esteem, hold ideals different from others’ and work tirelessly to realize them. They feel the world is full of exciting things and experiences, that the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness, and “fun” is what drives them to do things.
In love they can immediately pick out what they want and are absolutely faithful, but this also means they are extremely possessive. And because they usually already have a model of the ideal lover in mind, the best way to capture their heart is to understand them thoroughly.
Personality traits: extroverted and active, lively and cheerful, energetic, with wide interests. They are always finding ways to satisfy what they want, love to play, crave novelty and fear commitment, long to have more, and tend to avoid worries, pain and anxiety. They become absorbed in what interests them and love the pleasures of dining out, entertainment, travel or chatting with friends about everything under the sun, but are not good at handling tedious and detailed tasks. They are happy, warm-hearted, positive-minded people.
7. It becomes 〝目〞 (mù)
People of this type, you could say, are coordinators. They are very afraid of being hurt, so they are highly defensive, and sometimes hurt others through excessive defensiveness. They want to do everything perfectly and make themselves and the world more perfect, but often, being too eager for quick success, they fail to get what they want.
They strive for correctness and perfection in what they do, have principles and standards, and often tend toward self-criticism and toward requiring others to do things by their standards. Rational and upright, they often suppress the irrational side of their nature, harboring resentment without voicing it.
Personality tendencies: introverted, passive and critical. They focus on mistakes and correcting them; they are responsible, independent and hardworking, rational, mature and goal-oriented, principled, with standards, and value efficiency, but they like to criticize others, lack patience, like to work first and enjoy later, and tend to suppress impulses and desires, being overly rigid. They are reasonable, practical, down-to-earth people. But on the road of love they are easily tempted to shift their target; though not intentionally, they break many hearts this way.
8. It becomes 〝电〞 (diàn)
People of this type have very complex personalities with many sides; with a moment’s carelessness they can easily lose themselves, because they cannot work out what kind of person they really are. They like to focus on relationships and feelings; when unhappy, they like to deal with it alone; with people they don’t know well, they appear silent and cold. They are especially moved by life’s sorrows and tragedies and find being misunderstood by others particularly painful. But their creativity, passion and rich emotions are very attractive, so they are never short of friends!
When rejected or frustrated, they withdraw and become silent and shy. When others face a crisis, they are very supportive and sympathetic. They have a rich and lively imagination and like to reorganize things into new patterns. They are intuitive, sensitive and creative people. In love, because they have so many sides, they easily attract the opposite sex.
9. It becomes 〝旦〞 (dàn)
People of this type usually love helping others, long to be loved, appreciated and recognized, are understanding and empathetic, and are eager to meet others’ needs while hoping to go unnoticed.
Personality tendencies: extroverted, proactive and emotionally rich. They focus on satisfying important others, are glad to give, strive to meet others’ needs and become indispensable to them. They tend to suppress or neglect their own feelings and do not like to express their true feelings directly; they lack autonomy and ideas of their own. They like being with friends and enjoy listening to their stories, are warm, friendly, loving and patient toward people, value relationships, and are caring, helpful and generous people.
Their emotional life is very delicate, so being in love with such a person will make your life happier. But because they are not good at saying no to others, they sometimes wear themselves out and bring a lot of unnecessary trouble on themselves.
10. Cannot form a character
People of this type often feel they are different from others, extraordinary and unique. They see themselves as emotionally rich, romantic, tasteful and individual. They long for self-understanding and for their inner feelings to be recognized; they like to go their own way, do not cater to popular taste, are emotionally rich, romantic and creative in thought, and have keen sensibilities and an aesthetic eye.
Personality tendencies: introverted, passive, sentimental and emotionally rich. They like to focus on relationships and feelings; when unhappy, they like to deal with it alone; with people they don’t know well, they appear silent and cold; they are especially moved by life’s sorrows and tragedies. They find being misunderstood by others particularly painful, and when rejected or frustrated they withdraw and become silent and shy.
When others face a crisis, they are very supportive and sympathetic. They have a rich and lively imagination and like to reorganize things into new patterns; they are intuitive, sensitive and creative people. In love they are somewhat overcautious and often meet with setbacks, and they are also prone to heartbreak. In their love life, either they have only one partner all their lives, or they may change girlfriends often.
── Reposted from the WeChat account Insights on Life, abridged
