A 38-year-old Chinese from Chong Qing city met Cangjie in his dream. Cangjie taught him the art of literomancy, or deciphering Chinese characters. Literomancy, a form of fortune-telling, has been used for clairvoyance since ancient times.
According to Sound of Hope Broadcasting, the Chinese man, called San Mu, said that he dreamt of a huge elderly figure with white hair and a long beard.
The elderly person held San in the palm of his hand and asked: “Do you know me?” San shook his head: “No”. The elderly person said: “I am Cangjie who created the characters. Let me teach you how to decipher one”.
The character Cangjie taught San was 爆 (bao), meaning explode.
Both the left and right sides of 爆 are full characters. On the left is 火, meaning fire, and on the right is 暴 that carries the pronunciation of bao and means violent or brutal.
The main part of the character is on the right, 暴, and itself contains three full characters in the upper, middle, and lower parts. They are: 日, which refers to the sun, 共, means common, and 水, water.
The one in the middle, 共, is an abbreviation of 中共 that refers to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
San recalls how Cangjie explained the full character of 爆:
Cangjie drew the character in the air first and then said: “People must not be associated with the CCP. You walk forward with it, you will get burnt by fire; you go upward with it, you will be burnt to death by the sun; you jump downward with it, you will be drowned.”
He continued: “Only when you disassociate yourself from it will you have a chance of survival, understand?” Afterwards Cangjie disappeared.
In China, most people have to join the CCP, either as Young Pioneers as soon as they reach school age—children are requested to wear a red scarf and routinely pledge their loyalty to the Party under the red flag—and/or in the Communist Youth League when they reach their teens.
Universities are active grounds for recruiting CCP Members, often under the camouflage of receiving an honor. Being a Party member is the only channel for gaining government posts.
What is strange is that though communists are atheists, everybody who joins CCP organizations must declare an oath of faith, devoting his life to the Party.
This literomancy reading of 爆 matches the interpretation of the Tuidang movement in China.
Tuidang literally means retreating from the Party. Through formally renouncing their association with CCP organizations, people cancel their past pledges or their deals with the CCP (whether they made their pledges unwittingly or were seduced into them).
The number of Chinese people who have disassociated from the Party is immense.
As one of the five elements, 火, the character for fire, is also a commonly used radical. When you see it, you would guess that the word is related to fire. Such as 煉 refine, 爐 furnace, 燈 light, 炒 fry, 煤 coal, 灰 ash, 煙 smoke, 燃燒 burning, 燦爛 bright, 火災 fire disaster, and 滅 eliminate …
Can you find where the fire is in the last character, 滅? This is also an interesting character. We shall write about it next time.
Edited by Damian Robin.
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