六〇年代，我二十來歲，父親五十來歲。有一天，他跟我說了一個故事。
他年輕時，也曾坐在董慕節面前。那位「鐵板神算」，全香港都在談的人物，替富商、影星批命。單憑一個生辰，董慕節告訴他：某年，會有一位貴人前來提攜。然後是第二位。然後是第三位。
往後那些年，父親眼看著三位貴人一一到來，時候分毫不差。
我把它當成一個好聽的故事，收了起來。
直到 1973 年，我決定自己去試一次。
那不是走得進去的門。董慕節不接生客——須有熟人引薦，還常要排上一年。一位香港的朋友替我安排了。那次批命，花了我一千美金。
他撥著鐵算盤，口中報出數字，從一疊手抄本裡，抽出屬於我的條文。其中兩句，我當場就笑了：他說，我終將回台灣終老；他說，我的婚姻不會長久。
我一個字都不信。
如今我坐在這裡寫下這段話——退休，在台灣。也離了婚。
這就是這門技藝幾百年來的名聲：準得可怕。它不是那種人人適用的運勢，而是一條一條早已寫定的詩籤，據說只屬於你一個人——彷彿你的一生，早已鑄在一塊鐵板之上。「鐵板神數」的名字，正是這麼來的。
它大半的歷史都鎖在門後：師徒相傳，一字不改，價碼高到尋常人碰不著。董慕節已於 2024 年辭世，享年一百零一。他那一疊手抄本，隨他而去。
所幸，鐵板神數不只一家。
這兩年，我藉 AI 之力，把幾支仍有古籍可考的算法重新解了出來，做成「鐵板神數 · Iron Scripture」。當年花我一千美金、還得等上一年的那件事，你如今只需一個生辰，免費。
我不求你相信任何一個字。我只求你來看一眼。
Back in the sixties, when I was in my twenties and my father in his fifties, he told me a story.
He, too, had once sat before Tung Mo Chieh (董慕節) — the "Iron Abacus," the master the whole of Hong Kong spoke of, who read for the city's tycoons and film stars. From nothing but a birth time, Tung had named when a 貴人 — a benefactor — would come to lift him up. Then a second. Then a third.
Over the years, my father watched all three arrive, right on time.
I filed it away as a good story. Then, in 1973, I decided to find out for myself.
You couldn't just walk in. Tung took no strangers — you needed an introduction, and often a year's wait. A friend in Hong Kong arranged mine. The reading cost me a thousand US dollars.
He worked an iron abacus, called out numbers, and drew verses from a stack of hand-copied books. Two of the things he told me, I laughed off: that in the end I would come home to Taiwan for good — and that my marriage would not last.
I didn't believe a word.
I am writing this retired, in Taiwan. And divorced.
That is the reputation this art has carried for centuries: scarily accurate. Not vague, one-size-fits-all horoscopes — specific verses, written down long ago, said to belong to you and you alone, as if your life had been cast onto an iron plate. That is how it got its name.
For most of its history it stayed locked away: passed master to master, never edited, and priced far out of reach. Tung died in 2024, aged 101. The stack of hand-copied books he read from went with him.
But Iron-Plate divination was never one lineage alone.
These past two years, with the help of AI, I have reconstructed the computation behind several lineages whose texts do survive, and built it into Iron Scripture. What cost me a thousand dollars and a year's wait, you can now do from your birth time. Free.
I won't ask you to believe a word. I only ask you to look.