Cast & Chart

Guan Di lot 71 of 100

A magpie at the eaves

Middling (中平, 辛甲). Grades differ between editions, and many Taiwanese temples print none. Shown as Wikisource gives it. Wikisource prints no stem pair for this lot, so 辛甲 is from manekineko.com.tw.

喜鵲簷前報好音

知君千里欲歸心

繡幃重結鴛鴦帶

葉落霜飛寒色侵

A magpie at the eaves brings good news.

I know your heart is set on coming home from a thousand miles away.

The embroidered curtains will tie the mandarin-duck belt again.

Leaves fall and frost flies, and the cold is coming in.

What this lot says

This is a lot about a homecoming. The verse says news is arriving and that someone returns, with a note that the cold weather is setting in.

It suits a question about someone who is away. The last line says the return happens late in the year.

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

Su Wu returns home (蘇武還鄉)

According to the account on Wikisource, Su Wu of the Han was detained by the Xiongnu while serving as an envoy and herded sheep by the sea for nineteen years. When a Han envoy learned where he was, the Xiongnu finally let him go.

Source: Wikisource, 關聖帝君靈籤/71, 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)

喜鵲簷前報好音 / 知君千里欲歸心 / 繡幃重結鴛鴦帶 / 葉落霜飛寒色侵

Retrieved 2026-11-09. Transcription licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

manekineko.com.tw (富貴轉運站)

喜鵲簷前報好音 / 知君千里欲歸心 / 繡幃重結鴛鴦帶 / 葉落霜飛寒色侵

Retrieved 2026-11-09

Where the sources differ

  • Line 1: a note in Wikisource's transcription gives 雀 for 鵲, apparently a variant reading.
  • Line 4: a note in Wikisource's transcription gives 凋暮 for 飛寒, apparently a variant reading.

English translation, meaning and story summaries are by Cast & Chart.