At the Dalongdong Baoan Temple on the eve of the Lunar New Year, the Great Sovereign Protector of Life (Baosheng Dadi) predicted the national fate of Taiwan in the year of the snake. The head of the temple threw moon blocks, drew fortune sticks, and used oracle slips to analyze the god’s arbitration of Taiwan’s destiny.
Block divination and stick divination are common means of divination in temples in Taiwan. The ritual begins with worshipping the deity followed by dropping the blocks in multiple rounds and posing isolated “yes” or “no” questions. After a series of tosses, a single bamboo stick is selected from a cylinder containing sixty sticks, which are numbered. The numbers correspond to fortune poems printed on pink slips of paper with verses revealing the prognostication.
This year, the following oracle was offered for Taiwan:
Pure gold is refined by a thousand fires, turning it into a most precious treasure. Its structure is clearly exceptional, who dares moving it reducing it to ash.
These words provide a basis for interpretation and understanding, which may be adapted to individual context. From the viewpoint of Lin Shu-quan (林恕全), Baoan Temple’s oracle interpreter and an author, they represent an auspicious or “very good” fortune. In particular, he helped to explain that the message of the second line is “the foundation of the nation’s democracy and freedom must be maintained”.
While the poems do not have any specific political content, their message is also not lost on the government. President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) paid a public visit to Baoan Temple on the first day of the Lunar New Year.