Omen Watching, Mantic Observation, Aeromancy, and Learning to ‘See’: The Rise and Messy Multiplicity of Zhanhou 占候 in Late Han and Medieval China

This article investigates the early history of a Chinese mantic practice unattested before the late first century CE known as zhanhou 占候 (lit., omen watching; divination through observation; divination of atmo-spheric or meteorological conditions). While early occurrences of the term primarily present it as a learned form of divination used to forecast human fortune through the interpretation of anomalous emanations of qi 氣 in heaven-and-earth (e.g., wind; clouds; rain; rainbows), zhanhou is also variously classified as an astrological, Five Agents, or military technique; and variously identified as a hemerological, medical, and contemplative-visualization practice by the end of the Tang. I not only contend that zhanhou’s inherent polysemy and its multiple identities helped broaden and perpetuate its transmission during the first millennium of the Common Era, but also that the same messy multiplicity makes its early history and development difficult—but not impossible—to trace and understand. Zhanhou closely resembles many earlier named forms of astrology and divination focused on the observation and interpretation of macrocosmic qi conditions or phenomena, but late Han and early medieval writers carved out a space for zhanhou. This was done through increasingly frequent use of the term, by explicitly distinguishing it from similar families of techniques (e.g., astrology; turtle and yarrow divination; yinyang; algorithmic mantic techniques), and by identifying and constructing networks and lineages of practitioners, both of which helped form and perpetuate zhanhou’s identity as a discrete technique (shu 術). The present study compares different definitions and translations of zhanhou, analyzes a handful of late Han occurrences, and illustrates the term’s increasingly widespread medieval circulation, chiefly through biographic narratives and technical texts

Cracking to divine: Pyro-plastromancy as an archetypal and common mantic and religious practice in Han and medieval china

Pyro-plastromancy, the mantic art of cracking turtle plastrons with fire, is one of the earliest documented forms of divination in East Asian history. This dissertation springs from the simple thesis that the divinatory cracking of turtle plastrons remained a living mantic and religious tradition in first-millennium CE China. Theoretical insights from the modern academic fields of semiotic, literary, cultural, and religious studies are utilized to help construct a multi-dimensional approach able to account for the methods, functions, institutions, and theories associated with the technique. These dimensions are separately and diachronically analyzed in the body of the dissertation to set up a number of brief comparative and synchronic views of pyro-plastromancy set in more circumscribed Han and medieval Chinese milieus. Pyro-plastromancy is not just any form of Chinese divination; it is the archetypal model, as reflected in the pervasive use of the pyro-osteomantic (divination with fire and bone) and pyro-plastromantic term bu for all divination. As the historically earliest form of royal divination, the divinatory cracking of bones and shells possessed a special political and religious authority as the high orthodox form of divination, even when much cheaper and hence popularly accessible arts like achilleomancy (divination with yarrow stalks) and hemerology (the determination of auspicious dates) became dominant. For academic purposes, the study of a semi-ossified form of orthodox divination is an ideal place to attempt a truly multi-dimensional analysis, because while all the features of a developed and socially sanctioned mantic activity were present, its scope and evolution was relatively limited. This dissertation concludes that the divinatory cracking of turtle plastrons persisted as potent source of cultural capital, served as a focal point of institutional and popular mantic and religious interaction, and flourished as an archetypal and common way to access culturally constructed notions of divine or spiritual power in Han and medieval China

Divergent clonal selection dominates medulloblastoma at recurrence

The development of targeted anti-cancer therapies through the study of cancer genomes is intended to increase survival rates and decrease treatment-related toxicity. We treated a transposon-driven, functional genomic mouse model of medulloblastoma with 'humanized' in vivo therapy (microneurosurgical tumour resection followed by multi-fractionated, image-guided radiotherapy). Genetic events in recurrent murine medulloblastoma exhibit a very poor overlap with those in matched murine diagnostic samples (<5%). Whole-genome sequencing of 33 pairs of human diagnostic and post-therapy medulloblastomas demonstrated substantial genetic divergence of the dominant clone after therapy (<12% diagnostic events were retained at recurrence). In both mice and humans, the dominant clone at recurrence arose through clonal selection of a pre-existing minor clone present at diagnosis. Targeted therapy is unlikely to be effective in the absence of the target, therefore our results offer a simple, proximal, and remediable explanation for the failure of prior clinical trials of targeted therapy