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Sanming Tonghui · A Comprehensive Account of the Three Destinies
On the Conception Origin
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Conception is the beginning of receiving form, so the Changes says Qian knows the Great Beginning, speaking of form. Month is the time of completed energy, so a commentary says accumulated days make a month, speaking of energy. Some present-day discussions do not value the conception month, failing to consider it as the four pillars' root and shoot. Though day and hour are crucial, not infringing or breaking the conception month, or riding Flourishing energy and Emolument and Horse, gives especially many blessings. Auspicious day and hour infringed by the conception month become useless. Thus the conception month is the most pivotal point.
There is only one method for taking Conception Origin: use three hundred days before birth as ten months' energy, the correct conception time. A Jiazi-day birth therefore uses Jiazi as the conception day, since five times sixty gives three hundred days. Inspect in which month that birth day appears; an intercalary month lies within. For example, a Wuzi person born in a Jiayin month on a Yichou day must seek the corresponding Yichou day within the tenth or eleventh month, after the source's irregular half-month-before phrase. That is the correct conception three hundred days earlier.
Translator's note: The three-hundred-day method, same-cycle-day example, intercalary-month statement, and damaged half-month wording follow the source. This historical conception calculation is not a modern determination of pregnancy duration.
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