What 蓍 means
Stalk-counting divination is archaeologically attested by the Shang period, and the graph survives in Chu Warring States period forms plus a Shuowen entry — Unicode only encoded it later. Readers counted yarrow stalks into numbers to judge lucky or dangerous outcomes.
The frame around it moved: Shang divination asked gods and royal ancestors, while Zhou Changes reading tied results to Heaven, virtue and action. 蓍龜 pairs yarrow stalks with turtle shell — 蓍/筮 is the stalk side, 龜/卜 the shell side.
Literary and specialist: use it for plant names, classical texts and divination compounds.
Alone, 蓍 is the plant; add context for divination.
Who writes 蓍
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Questions people ask
1Why does 蓍 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
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How to type or find 蓍
- Also called
- 蓍草 · yarrow · milfoil
- Search it as
- shicao · shī · shi · 蓍龜 · 蓍龟 · iching · 筮
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
蓍\84CDCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.