Visualizing Weather: Cloud Imagery, Divination, and Knowledge Making in the Ming Dynasty

In Ming China, various versions of the Baiyuan jing (Classic of the White Ape) circulated as illustrated manuals for cloud divination. These works combined detailed diagrams of cloud forms with accompanying texts that linked shapes, colors, and positions of clouds in relation to the sun, moon, and stars to predictions of wind, rain, or drought. As popular publications, they not only mediated practical techniques of weather forecasting but also reflected broader cosmological and divinatory worldviews. This paper situates the Baiyuan jing within the long tradition of “cloud atlases” in China, tracing textual and visual precedents from the Han dynasty "Taiyi zazi yunyu" to Ming treatises such as the “Yudi qinji yunqi zhanhou” in "Wubeizhi" and the "Taiyi yujian fengyu xian". In doing so, it highlights processes of inheritance, compilation, and creative adaptation. The paper further analyzes the legendary framing of the text as a revelation—“the White Ape presenting the Three Luminaries”—which inserted practical meteorological knowledge into the discourse of auspicious omens and dynastic legitimacy. Finally, it considers the role of late-Ming book culture: commercial publishers and booksellers capitalized on the growing “brand” of Liu Bowen (1311—1375), attaching his name to new compilations and thereby transforming technical cloud-divination manuals into popular commodities. By examining these manuscripts and printed versions, this study reveals how cloud imagery in the Ming dynasty functioned simultaneously as a visual medium of atmospheric knowledge, a tool of Daoist divination, and a site where imperial ideology and commercial culture converged.