Guan Di lot 46 of 100
Riding the ox is freer
Middling (中平, 戊己). Grades differ between editions, and many Taiwanese temples print none. Shown as Wikisource gives it. Wikisource prints no stem pair for this lot, so 戊己 is from manekineko.com.tw.
君是山中萬戶侯
信知騎馬勝騎牛
今朝馬上看山色
爭似騎牛得自由
You are the lord of ten thousand households in the mountains.
I truly know that riding a horse beats riding an ox.
Today you look at the mountains from horseback.
How could it compare with the freedom of riding the ox?
What this lot says
This is a lot about status and freedom. The verse sets the pride of a horse against the ease of an ox, and the last line prefers the ox.
If you are weighing a prestigious path against a quieter one, it leans toward the one that leaves you freer.
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 orphan avenges his wrongs (孤兒報冤)
According to the account on Wikisource, Zhao Wu of the Jin was born after his father was killed by a rival. His family friends saved him by sacrificing another child in his place, hid him in the mountains for fifteen years, and he later restored the family and punished the killer.
Source: Wikisource, 關聖帝君靈籤/46, 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)
君是山中萬戶侯 / 信知騎馬勝騎牛 / 今朝馬上看山色 / 爭似騎牛得自由
Retrieved 2026-11-09. Transcription licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
manekineko.com.tw (富貴轉運站)
君是山中萬戶侯 / 信知騎馬勝騎牛 / 今朝馬上看山色 / 爭似騎牛得自由
Retrieved 2026-11-09
English translation, meaning and story summaries are by Cast & Chart.