Art of War 11.26

祥 is amplified by Ts‘ao Kung into 妖祥之言, and 疑 into 疑惑之計. Cf. the Ssŭ-ma Fa, ch. 3: 滅厲祥.

The superstitious, “bound in to saucy doubts and fears,” degenerate into cowards and “die many times before their deaths.” Tu Mu quotes Huang Shih-kung: 禁巫祝不得爲吏士卜問軍之吉凶恐亂軍士之心 “‘Spells and incantations should be strictly forbidden, and no officer allowed to inquire by divination into the fortunes of an army, for fear the soldier’s minds should be seriously perturbed.’ The meaning is,” he continues, “that if all doubts and scruples are

discarded, your men will never falter in their resolution until they die.” The reading of the standard text is 無所之 “there will be no refuge,” which does not fit in well here. I therefore prefer to adopt the variant 災, which evidently stood in Li Ch‘üan’s text.