''Guicang'' (歸藏, "Return to the Hidden") is a divination text dating to the

Zhou dynasty The Zhou dynasty ( ; Old Chinese ( B&S): *''tiw'') was a royal dynasty of China that followed the Shang dynasty. Having lasted 789 years, the Zhou dynasty was the longest dynastic regime in Chinese history. The military control of China by th ...

, which was once used in place of the ''

I Ching The ''I Ching'' or ''Yi Jing'' (, ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zho ...

''. The text of ''Guicang'' was rediscovered in a rural bog in 1993; it had been lost for roughly two thousand years. ''Guicang'' contains the sixty-four hexagrams and stories relating to each of them. For example, Hexagram 54 of the ''I Ching'', "Returning Maiden", is accompanied by the story of how the maiden

Chang'e Chang'e ( ; , alternatively rendered as Chang-Er or Ch‘ang-o), originally known as Heng'e, is the Chinese goddess of the Moon. She is the subject of several legends in Chinese mythology, most of which incorporate several of the following elem ...

stole the medicine of immortality from

Xi Wangmu The Queen Mother of the West, known by various local names, is a mother goddess in Chinese religion and mythology, also worshipped in neighbouring Asian countries, and attested from ancient times. From her name alone some of her most importan ...

and, upon returning home, used the hexagrams to determine that she should flee to the moon.

Footnotes

I Ching Taoist texts Confucian texts Chinese classic texts Chinese books of divination Chinese folk religion {{taoism-stub