Cast & Chart

Omikuji lot 82 of 100

Fire Against the Sky

凶 Kyo, Bad fortune

火發應連天

新愁惹舊愆

欲求千里外

要渡更無舩

Fire breaks out, reaching up to the sky;

new sorrow stirs up the old fault.

You want to seek something a thousand miles off;

you must cross, and there is no boat.

What this lot says

A blaze climbs until it seems joined to the heavens. A recent grief brings an earlier wrong back to life. What is wanted lies a thousand miles away, and the water that has to be crossed has no boat on it.

Fire at the start and an empty shore at the close frame a situation without a way across, and the poem offers none. In the book the grade reads Kyo, Bad fortune, as printed over these lines.

Seen in modern life, this is a fresh problem that reopens an old one just as attention is fixed on somewhere far away. A distant goal can grow more attractive when things at hand are burning.

A lot is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.

The printed text

No differences from the 1684 printing are recorded for this lot.

Credits

The verse and grade were read from the two scanned printings named here. The title, translation and reading are our own and modern.

Our own English. The kana commentary printed under each verse in the old books was not read.