Well before the first empire (221–206 B.C.), the Chinese practised a form of uranomancy, or portent astrology, so similar to what we find in Mesopotamia as to invite conjecture about their common origins. The metaphysical basis is, in short, that as the world came into being through mitosis from a state of singularity, the ‘ten thousand things’ on earth saw themselves reflected in the myriad forms among the stars, the strands of destiny connecting them and projecting, through sympathy, terrestrial disturbances upon the sky. Due to its modern classification as a ‘pseudo-science’, twentieth-century scholarship on the subject tended to focus on fakery: on political manipulations and historical fabrications. It is only in the last decade, most notably in the work of Chen Kanli, that we have begun to shift our attention to the ways in which this science was earnestly developed and integrated into classical scholarship, ethics, and ritual at the imperial court. Building upon this, I will present the results of a statistical study of imperial decrees issued in response to solar eclipses from A.D. 25 to 581. Examined en masse, we will see that that throne’s historical words and actions are formulaic and concerned principally with virtue, lending themselves to comparison with the classical drum ceremony held to drive away the eclipse. In other words, setting aside the questions of scepticism and belief, I suggest that we think of omens, in early imperial China, as occasions for ritual action to reinforce ethical norms.