Guo En

Biography & Historical Record

Guo En (郭恩, Quách Ân), courtesy name Yibo (义博, tự Nghĩa Bác), was a scholar-commoner of Liccao (利漕; the Wei canal settlement in the Quzhou–Daming country of present Hebei). He is not a court minister. Chen Shou places him in Sanguozhi Wei 29, biography of the diviner Guan Lu (管辂, Quản Lộ), courtesy Gongming (公明, Công Minh): Guan Lu’s father served at Liccao, and “the Liccao man Guo En and his two brothers all suffered lameness” (躀疾), so they asked Guan Lu to cast for the cause. Guan Lu read a family tomb in the hexagram, a female ghost inside it — “not your father’s elder brother’s wife, but your father’s younger brother’s wife” — and said that in a year of famine someone had coveted a few sheng of grain, pushed the woman into a well (she still made a sound), then rolled a great stone that smashed her head. The lonely soul had complained to Heaven. Guo En wept and admitted the crime.

Pei Songzhi’s quotation of Guan Lu Biezhuan (管辂别传) thickens the same man. Guo En, styled Yibo, was learned in the Changes and the Spring and Autumn and could read the sky. Guan Lu first studied the Changes under him; within tens of days the pupil’s questions outran the teacher. He then studied stellar observation with Yibo, going thirty nights without lying down, and said he needed only the star-field locations — the cycles and omens he would judge by his own allotment. Before a year was out, Yibo was the one asking Guan Lu about the Changes and astronomy, and he forgot his own lameness while listening. When he finally begged a hexagram “if there is guilt, let Heaven pardon us and do not begrudge a prayer,” Guan Lu stayed the night, solved it at midnight, and Yibo soaked his robe with tears: the murder had happened at the end of Han; he would not name the killer (propriety), and Guan Lu had not named him (taboo). The three brothers had been lame more than thirty years, feet like thorns; he asked only that the punishment stop with their generation. Guan Lu said the fire figure was not cut off but the water figure had no remainder — it would not reach the children.

The same biography adds a second visit: a dove cried sadly on the beam; Guan Lu predicted an old man from the east with a pig and a flask of wine, and a small mishap despite the host’s joy. Next day the guest came; Guo En warned him off wine, meat, and fire, then shot a chicken for the meal — the arrow glanced through trees and struck a little girl’s hand. Gan Bao’s Soushenji retells the well-and-stone casting as “Guan Lu Divines for Guo En,” almost word for word with Chen Shou. Luo Guanzhong folds the first anecdote into Chapter 69 among Guan Lu’s capital wonders; he does not stage the dove or the years of teacher-and-pupil study.

Role in Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 69 (Guan Lu Divines at Xu Capital; Five Loyal Subjects Die for the State): While Guan Lu’s reputation spreads at the Wei court, the narrator inserts a commoner’s case. “There was a certain Guo En, a man of the people, who had two brothers. All three became lame.” They ask Guan Lu to divine. He answers that the family tomb holds a female ghost — an aunt, either father’s elder or younger brother’s wife — who in a famine year was pushed into a well for a few sheng of rice and crushed with a great stone; her lonely soul complained to Heaven, and so the brothers are lame. “This retribution cannot be prayed away.” Guo En and his brothers weep and confess. In the novel Guan Lu speaks the verdict in one sitting; historically the Biezhuan makes Guo En first Guan Lu’s teacher of the Changes, then his host, then the weeping penitent after a night’s calculation. The chapter’s other Guan Lu scenes (Xu court, the glow in the sky, the five loyalists) continue without Guo En on stage again.

Guo En (郭恩, Quách Ân) — Historical & Literary Timeline

For the diviner who judged his case, explore Guan Lu on Wikipedia.

Key Relationships

Family

• Two unnamed brothers: all three lame for thirty-odd years; they share the guilt Guan Lu reads from the tomb.
• Murdered aunt (叔父之妻 / 叔母): pushed into a well for grain and crushed with a stone in a late-Han famine; the female ghost in the family grave.
• No spouse or children named; Guan Lu told Yibo the punishment would not pass to descendants.

Friends

• Guan Lu (管辂, Quản Lộ), courtesy Gongming: first Guo En’s student in the Changes, then the caster who named the ghost; Chapter 69 and Sanguozhi Wei 29.

Enemies

• No living political foe. The antagonist is the unexpiated murder inside the family — Heaven’s retribution, not a rival general.

Other

• Liccao (利漕): canal settlement where Guan Lu’s father served and where Guo En lived — Quzhou / Daming country, Hebei.
• The east-coming guest with pig and wine, and the wounded girl: second Sanguozhi anecdote at Guo En’s house, not retold in Chapter 69.
• Other Chapter 69 Guan Lu clients at Xu: the court frame that surrounds this folk case.