In contrast to modern views, Chinese folk wisdom says that no matter how skilfully and dedicatedly you work, there are independent factors involved in determining your success: ‘Destiny and human effort both play their part.’ These independent agencies include the cosmological resonance of yin and yang, the bagua, the Five Phases and the flow of qi. They also include astrology as a separate repertoire, as well as the workings of various invisible beings. Similarly, symbols and rituals may have their effects, as may other matters.

Such autonomous and unpredictable agencies may seem inconsistent with the idea of a fundamentally undivided world, which is characteristic of Chinese cosmology. It is nevertheless symptomatic of an anthropocentric worldview. Each of the above phenomena may derive from the same basic cosmological processes, but they still have their own power and will. Compared to modern notions of a world divided into various domains of, for instance, the natural, the social and the psychical, to which specific laws of causality may apply, anthropocentrism tends to invert domain and agency. There is only one domain, the world that matters, but multiple agencies exercise their influence on it. As compared to a monotheistic rationalism, such as Christianity, there is no incentive to reduce them into a common formula.