In the process of the research for the book, I stumbled across some information pertaining

to medieval China that I thought deserved looking further looking into.

And that is what I'm engaged in now.

This is very much a work in progress.

And in the discussion period, I hope you will feel free to contribute.

I may even take a vote at the end on whether or not I'm too far out on a limb or not.

Anyway, just briefly to orient you a little bit about Sima Qian and the treaties on the celestial offices,

Tim Guan Shu, Professor Zhao just mentioned that I translated.

What I'm particularly interested in, of course, it's a very, it's a massive compendium of all the astrological lore,

astronomical and astrological, there was really no distinction, of course.

In the, up to the Sima Qian's own time, in the second century BC,

he succeeded his father in the post of Grand Scribe Astrologer.

And really, his work is really a joint effort on the part of both his father and himself.

He produced the book very shortly after his father died and after he had assumed the post,

the hereditary post.

But anyway, I wanted to lay a little bit of groundwork about their astrological theory,

which was one of the unique aspects of the Tian Guanzhu.

Rather than simply describing all of the astronomical wisdom and lore that he was aware of, it's

clear that they were actually trying to formulate an astrological theory of history.

And he says that quite explicitly.

Here are just some passages where he speaks to this.

And you can see, looking forward and backward, before and after events, and what they did,

of course, was go back in Chinese history and look at the connection between astrological

moments and events on the ground.

The point is to discern the continuity of interactions between heaven and man, to otherwise

investigate the boundary between the celestial and human in order to comprehend historical

change, past and present, and to explore events from beginning to end, from ancient times

to the present.

But notice that what you have here is a claim to discern historical metanarrative in Chinese

civilization.

But something that's very typical, very typical, as we'll see, and as anyone who is familiar

with Chinese astrology will know, Chinese astrology, unlike what many of you may be

familiar with in the West, is primarily focused on, in some ways, in some respects, similar

to Mesopotamian astral omens, documenting and cataloging past events to try and understand

the significance of various kinds of astral events to apply in the present when things,

anomalies occur.

When Sima Tian here talks about a thousand years before and after events, he's talking

about events in the past, a thousand years before and a thousand years after, but not

projecting forward from his own time into the long-term future.

So here's another very important passage from his work that bears specifically on the planets

and on the planetary gatherings.

Planetary massings are potentially strategic, but achieve very strong dynastic implications.

This was already the case by the beginning of the Han dynasty because the planetary alignment

that occurred at the very beginning of the Han dynasty and was attributed to Gaozu Liu

Ba, had to have had, for this to have the significance that it did, it had to relate

to historical events in the past.

This was not something that was just thought up, oh, the planets are gathering, this must

be a sign that heaven is conferring a mandate on Liu Ba.

There was a history, and I'll briefly talk about it.

Much of the book that I wrote is about that history predating the Han dynasty.