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Sanming Tonghui · A Comprehensive Account of the Three Destinies
On the Year, Month, Day, and Hour
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In discussing a person's chart, arrange year, month, day, and hour as four pillars. Month calculation follows year, so year is root; hour follows day, so day is ruler. The ancient method examines the year and Ziping the day on this basis. A Wood root obtaining Mao month and a Metal ruler obtaining You hour are Root and Ruler Riding Flourishing Energy. A Water root obtaining Jiashen, Bingzi, Renxu, or Guihai month; a Fire ruler obtaining Bingyin, Wuwu, Jiachen, or Yisi hour, with variant spelling; a Wood root obtaining Jihai, Xinmao, Jiayin, or Gengyin month; and a Metal ruler obtaining Xinsi, Guiyou, Gengshen, or Renshen hour are Root and Ruler Returning Home. A Wood root obtaining Guiwei month and Metal ruler obtaining Yichou hour; the printed Wood-Water clause obtaining Renchen month; and a Fire ruler obtaining Jiaxu hour are Root and Ruler Holding Seal. With the four positions thus arranged, auspicious spirits coming and going and harmful Killings avoiding them, Root and Ruler Obtain Their Positions. Root stronger than ruler gives much ancestral protection; ruler stronger than root requires independent achievement. Both strong give wealth and rank together. Only with further moderation toward balance through the four pillars, neither excess nor deficiency, is it judged a good chart. One deficient position necessarily indicates obstruction. Yet the schools all say a good year is inferior to a good month, a good month to a good day, and a good day to a good hour. Broadly, year governs an entire year, month thirty days, and day and hour are regarded as decisive. They do not realize that auspicious day and hour without the month's response are instead useless. Moreover, Useful Spirit is usually taken from the month: can month be treated lightly? Li Xuzhong of Tang uniquely made the day stem ruler, examining year, month, and hour together for generation, conquest, restraint, transformation, Flourishing, Support, Rest, and Confinement to establish configurations. He disclosed what earlier worthies had not, so present practitioners take him as their authority.
Another account calls year the Grand Duke, governing lifelong misfortune and blessing. The birth-year Grand Duke may be Metal or Wood: day and month should generate and respond, the workings of creation harmonious, giving firm foundations and lifelong independent achievement. Other stems, branches, and phases out of harmony, instead conquering, clashing, and breaking, cause injury. Root and ruler lack longevity, with punishment-like markings and Killings. The following broken clause on birth, month, day, and hour indicates injured Wood energy, damaged ancestral property, distant family relations, and obstruction. Month is Fortune Origin; fortune proceeds from month. If day and hour are blessings for the birth year, return to the Fortune Origin's Birth and Flourishing to assist them. Thus Office, Seal, Noble Person, Emolument, Horse, and Wealth Star should occupy the Fortune Origin's Birth and Flourishing. If day and hour are its misfortunes, return to stripping and conquering positions for hidden balance. Much Earth blocking should return to an opening position; much Water flooding to a destination; much Fire exposed to a dimming and resting position; excessively strong Metal and Wood to a deeply hidden position. Fortune Origin may gather the birth hour's blessings or give blessings to it. Day is the meeting of three yang and the emperor's image; hour is the attendant minister close to the imperial seat. Day and hour thus have Ruler and Ministers in Joyful Assembly and Heaven and Earth Combining in Virtue. The four positions' Nayin may have Birth and Flourishing energy, or their Emolument, blessings, and noble energy gather atop the hour: Four Positions Gathering Blessings at the Imperial Seat. Or the hour reverses and raises, scattering Flourishing and refined energies through positions that ride an auspicious assembly: Imperial Seat Sending Blessings to the Four Positions. Gathering blessings at the seat gives a substantial, loyal, trustworthy heart; sending blessings to the positions gives self-advancement through intelligence, uprightness, and directness. The attendant minister especially fears excessive Earth, Fire, and Metal and cannot remain long. Clear, unusual Water and Wood often give literary academicians. Where year and month give blessings, the birth hour must not ruin them; where they are damaged, the birth hour should resolve them.
Thus year, month, day, and hour are equally important, with hour especially important. Rank or low status, longevity or early death, hardship or success, gain or loss depend on distinguishing birth time. An hour has eight subdivisions, with different initial, central, and final energies requiring careful examination.
The Treatise on Establishing Truth says: “Injuring year disfavors father; injuring month disfavors siblings and indicates hardship in early years. Injuring day disfavors oneself and is called the Broken Waist Killing. Injuring hour disfavors descendants and leaves no final result. Year generating day, month, and hour is Above Generating Below, damaging root energy and ancestral property. Hour generating day, month, and year is Below Generating Above, increasing blessings and virtue. Above Generating Below, with the printed Chou-travel encounter and energy of generating blessings, is also judged a good chart; riding energy that generates misfortune is unfavorable. Only pure four pillars, without punishment, clash, disruption, harm, Void, Death, or Extinction, and with blessing spirits mutually assisting, form an auspicious chart; the reverse is harmful.”
Translator's note: Every concrete stem-branch example and both root-versus-ruler and imperial-seat accounts are retained. The Wood-Water, injured-Wood-energy, and Chou-travel clauses are damaged or irregular in the supplied text and have not been replaced with a different rule. The Li Xuzhong attribution, eight-subdivision hour, and the relative emphasis on month and hour remain the author's statements.
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