This article is written by a Japanese by the name of Makoto Ogino.
Qi Men Dun Jia(or Qimendunjia) is one of the most powerful oracles, to know both good luck and bad luck in aspects of time and space(direction). Qi means mysterious or strange in usual, but in Takeda theory here, it means valuable or holy. Men means a gate, and Dun means hidden or escaped(to make hidden), and Jia is the first one of ten stems, which is considered as the most sacred in this method.
In Dun Jia(or Dunjia) theory, we use a kind of direction chart called Pan, which is drawed as a square divided into nine blocks( 3 x 3. eight directions and centre ). In each directional block, one of the eight gates is positioned. We put away Jia(because of its holiness) and use other nine stems to put them into Dun Jia Pan chart at first, and after several process of making, Jia comes into the Pan chart from one of the eight gates. And that's why this method is called Qi Men Dun Jia.
I have read about at least three kinds of Dunjia in Japan. So called Sangen, Tohru, and Takeda. Moreover, I've seen more several kinds of Dunjia, of which groups were not clear to me. And perhaps, there might be other kinds of Dunjia I have never known.
This is one of the most typical characteristics of Dunjia. In ancient age, those who won using Dunjia tried to keep it as top-secret, and suppressed Dunjia-masters to prevent from Dunjia-secret leaking to the enemies of the governors.
Many Dunjia-masters were arrested, but they'd never made the secret of Dunjia clear. Instead, they made up counterfeit methods as 'Dunjia'. That's why we can find many kinds of Dunjia, and lost which is the original one today.
