Guan Di lot 23 of 100
Flowers open and fall
Lowest (下下, 丙丙). Grades differ between editions, and many Taiwanese temples print none. Shown as Wikisource gives it. Wikisource prints no stem pair for this lot, so 丙丙 is from manekineko.com.tw.
花開花謝在春風
貴賤窮通百歲中
羨子榮華今已矣
到頭萬事總成空
Flowers open and flowers fall in the spring wind.
High and low, poor and successful, all happen within a hundred years.
I envy you your glory, but it is already past.
In the end all things come to emptiness.
What this lot says
This is a sober lot. The verse says rise and fall are part of every life, and that glory that has already passed is gone.
If you are holding on to a former position, it suggests loosening your grip. It makes no prediction, only a reminder to value what is lasting.
A lot is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
The story behind it
The King of Wu loves Xi Shi (吳王愛西施)
According to the account on Wikisource, after Wu defeated Yue, the Yue king and his advisers chose the beautiful Xi Shi and sent her to the King of Wu, who doted on her so much that his state fell.
Source: Wikisource, 關聖帝君靈籤/23, the 故事及記載 section
Where this text comes from
This verse is a traditional temple text with no known author. We read it from two named web transcriptions, Chinese Wikisource (the base text) and manekineko.com.tw. Neither is a scan of a printing, the edition behind them is mixed, and we could not establish whether the two are independent of each other.
Wikisource (關聖帝君靈籤) (the text shown above)
花開花謝在春風 / 貴賤窮通百歲中 / 羨子榮華今已矣 / 到頭萬事總成空
Retrieved 2026-11-09. Transcription licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
manekineko.com.tw (富貴轉運站)
花開花謝在春風 / 貴賤窮通百歲中 / 羨子榮華今已矣 / 到頭萬事總成空
Retrieved 2026-11-09
English translation, meaning and story summaries are by Cast & Chart.