Guan Di lot 42 of 100
Change the plan, not the hope
Fairly good (中吉, 戊乙). Grades differ between editions, and many Taiwanese temples print none. Shown as Wikisource gives it. Wikisource prints no stem pair for this lot, so 戊乙 is from manekineko.com.tw.
我曾許汝事和諧
誰料修為汝自乖
但改新圖莫依舊
營謀應得稱心懷
I once promised you that things would work out.
Who knew that your own conduct would spoil it?
Only change to a new plan, and do not follow the old.
Then your planning should bring you what you want.
What this lot says
This is a lot about a failed plan. The verse says that the earlier path did not work because of how it was carried out, and says a new plan can.
It treats a failure as information. If something has gone wrong, the verse asks what you would do differently now.
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
Dong Yong sells himself (董永賣身)
According to the account on Wikisource, Dong Yong of the Han had no money to bury his father and borrowed on the promise of working as a servant. In the legend, a woman who said she was the Weaving Girl came to help him, wove three hundred bolts of cloth in a month to pay the debt, and left.
Source: Wikisource, 關聖帝君靈籤/42, 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)
我曾許汝事和諧 / 誰料修為汝自乖 / 但改新圖莫依舊 / 營謀應得稱心懷
Retrieved 2026-11-09. Transcription licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
manekineko.com.tw (富貴轉運站)
我曾許汝事和諧 / 誰料修為汝自乖 / 但改新圖莫依舊 / 營謀應得稱心懷
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Where the sources differ
- A note in Wikisource's transcription gives 果 for 汝 (the line is unclear), apparently a variant reading.
- Line 4: Wikisource's commentary says 營謀 is also written 榮華, a reading it considers poor.
English translation, meaning and story summaries are by Cast & Chart.