Guan Di lot 52 of 100
Alone with one lamp
Good (上吉, 己乙). Grades differ between editions, and many Taiwanese temples print none. Shown as Wikisource gives it. Wikisource prints no stem pair for this lot, so 己乙 is from manekineko.com.tw.
兀坐幽居歎寂寥
孤燈掩映度清宵
萬金忽報秋光好
活計扁舟渡北朝
Sitting alone in a quiet dwelling, you sigh at the stillness.
One lamp flickers through the clear night.
Suddenly word comes, worth ten thousand in gold, that the autumn is good.
Your livelihood is a small boat crossing north.
What this lot says
This is a lot about a long, lonely period of study or work. The verse shows one lamp and one person, and then an unexpected piece of news.
The small boat in the last line is an image of a modest start in a new direction. If you have been working in private, the verse says it will be noticed.
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
Kuang Heng reads at night (匡衡夜讀書)
According to the account on Wikisource, Kuang Heng of the Han dynasty was too poor to buy a lamp and cut a hole in his neighbour's wall to read by the light that came through. He later rose to be chancellor.
Source: Wikisource, 關聖帝君靈籤/52, 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)
兀坐幽居歎寂寥 / 孤燈掩映度清宵 / 萬金忽報秋光好 / 活計扁舟渡北朝
Retrieved 2026-11-09. Transcription licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
manekineko.com.tw (富貴轉運站)
兀坐幽居歎寂廖 / 孤燈掩映度清宵 / 萬金忽報秋光好 / 活計扁舟渡北朝
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Where the sources differ
- Line 1 reads 兀坐幽居歎寂寥 in Wikisource and 兀坐幽居歎寂廖 on manekineko.com.tw. We show the Wikisource reading.
- Line 3: a note in Wikisource's transcription gives 黃 for 萬, apparently a variant reading.
- Line 4: Wikisource's commentary says 活計 is also written 決許.
English translation, meaning and story summaries are by Cast & Chart.