The Useful God in the Classic — Forming, Failing, Rescue

In Lesson 7 we fixed the Pattern from the month branch and chose the Useful God by four methods. This lesson goes back to the source those rules came from — the Zi Ping Zhen Quan (True Interpretation of Zi Ping), written in the Qing dynasty by Shen Xiaozhan — and reads its two chapters On the Useful God (論用神) and On Forming, Failing and Rescue (論用神成敗救應) line by line. The second chapter is the classic's own inspection table: for each of the eight Patterns, what counts as formed, what counts as failed, what blemish hides inside a formed chart, and what rescue can still save a failed one.

The Useful God is sought in the month, and only the month

The chapter opens with the sentence the whole school stands on: “The Useful God of a chart is sought in the month command alone; match the Day Master against the month branch, and by their producing and controlling the Pattern is fixed.” Wealth, Officer, Seal and Food God are the four good Useful Gods, to be used in the direction they flow; the Seven Killings, the Wounding Officer, the Robber and the Blade are the four difficult ones, to be used against their flow. Used in the right direction, all eight can make a noble chart. The commentator Xu Legu adds the warning that matters most: good and bad here have nothing to do with lucky and unlucky. A Killing or a Wounding Officer that serves the chart is a good god; an Officer or Wealth that harms it is a bad one. What counts is whether the combination fits.

The same chapter then lists the five methods of choosing the Useful God, and our Lesson 7 rules turn out to be four of them under other names. Support and restrain (扶抑): a strong Day Master is restrained, a weak one supported — and the same test is applied to the month god itself, which may be too strong to use or too weak to carry the chart. Cure the sickness (病藥): whatever harms the god you want becomes the sickness, and whatever removes it becomes the medicine. Regulate the climate (調候): a chart born in deep winter or high summer needs warming or cooling before anything else. Follow the prevailing force (專旺): when the whole chart leans one way and cannot be turned, go with it — the following and transforming charts. Mediate (通關): when two strong forces stand against each other, put the element between them that lets both flow. Nothing in our earlier lessons contradicts any of the five; the classic simply names the fifth, “cure the sickness”, which is the same table as “each Pattern has one thing it likes and one thing it fears”.

The straight road: what each Pattern likes and fears

After the five methods the classic gives the pairing table for all eight Patterns, in one paragraph. Wealth likes the Food God to feed it, and the Officer to guard it. The Officer likes Wealth to feed it, and the Seal to guard it. The Seal likes Officer and Killings to feed it, and peers to guard it. The Food God likes a strong body to carry it, and Wealth to carry its expression outward. The Seven Killings likes the Food God to control it, and fears Wealth and Seal feeding it. The Wounding Officer likes the Seal to restrain it, or Wealth to drain it. The Yang Blade likes Officer and Killings to tame it, and fears having neither. The Monthly Robber likes the Officer to control it, and, if Wealth is used, the Food God to transform the Robber into Wealth. This is the same table we printed in Lesson 7 — and the point of reading the classic is that it is now verified against the source, not taken on trust.

The chapter then warns against the five confusions that come from forgetting the month. An Officer accompanied by a Seal is not the same as a Seal Pattern using an Officer. Wealth with a Food God showing is not the same as a Food God Pattern producing Wealth. A Seal Pattern showing the Food God is not the Owl snatching the food. Killings controlled by Food with a Seal showing is not Killings producing Seal. Killings meeting a Blade is not the Blade being controlled by Killings. In each pair the same two gods appear, and the verdict is opposite — because in one the month gives the first god, and in the other it gives the second. “A hair's breadth apart, a thousand miles wrong” is the classic's own phrase. And when the month itself gives nothing usable — Wood born in Yin or Mao, the Day Master and the month the same — the chart must look outside the month for Wealth, Officer, Killings or Food to use. That is the Established Prosperity and Monthly Robber Pattern: the month gives no god, only the Day Master's own strength, and the chart must go elsewhere to find work to do.

Forming and failing: the inspection table

The second chapter is a checklist, Pattern by Pattern. An Officer Pattern forms when it meets Wealth and Seal and suffers no punishment, clash or injury. A Wealth Pattern forms when Wealth generates a strong Officer, or meets the Food God while the body is strong and carries peers, or reveals the Seal in a well-placed position so that Wealth and Seal do not obstruct each other. A Seal Pattern forms when a light Seal meets the Killings, or Officer and Seal are both complete, or body and Seal are both prosperous and Food or Wounding drains them, or a heavy Seal meets Wealth that is revealed but lightly rooted. A Food God Pattern forms when Food generates Wealth, or Food carries Killings without Wealth and the chart abandons the Food to take up the Killings while the Seal is revealed. A Killings Pattern forms when a strong body meets controlled Killings. A Wounding Officer Pattern forms when it generates Wealth, or is paired with the Seal while the Wounding is prosperous and the Seal rooted, or is prosperous while the Day Master is weak and Killings and Seal are revealed, or carries Killings without Wealth. A Blade Pattern forms when it reveals Officer or Killings together with Wealth and Seal and sees no Wounding Officer. An Established Prosperity or Monthly Robber Pattern forms when the Officer is revealed and meets Wealth and Seal, when Wealth is revealed and meets Food or Wounding, or when Killings are revealed and meet control.

Failing is the mirror image, and it is shorter to state. The Officer fails when it meets Wounding, control, punishment or clash. Wealth fails when it is light and peers are heavy, or when it reveals the Seven Killings. The Seal fails when a light Seal meets Wealth, or when the body is strong and the Seal heavy while Killings are revealed. The Food God fails when it meets the Owl, or generates Wealth while revealing Killings. The Killings fail when they meet Wealth and have no control. The Wounding Officer fails when it is not Metal or Water and sees the Officer, or generates Wealth while carrying Killings, or is paired with the Seal while the Wounding is light and the body strong. The Blade fails when it has neither Officer nor Killings. Established Prosperity and Monthly Robber fail when they have neither Wealth nor Officer but reveal Killings and Seal.

Blemishes inside forming, rescues inside failing

Two sentences carry the whole chapter: “Where failing hides inside forming, an aversion must be present; where forming hides inside failing, it is wholly by rescue.” A blemish (帶忌) is a formed chart with a second god pulling against it: the Officer meets Wealth and also meets Wounding; the Officer is revealed yet also combined away; Wealth generates the Officer yet meets Wounding or combination; the Seal reveals Food to drain it and then meets Wealth; Killings are revealed to generate the Seal and then Wealth is revealed to remove the Seal and keep the Killings; the Food God carries Killings and Seal yet meets Wealth; the Killings meet the Food God's control yet meet the Seal; the Wounding Officer generates Wealth and the Wealth in turn meets combination; the Seal is paired and the Seal suffers wounding, or Wealth is revealed and meets Killings. A rescue (救應) is the reverse move, and there are only three kinds of it: dissolve, combine away, or transform. The Officer meets Wounding and the Seal is revealed to dissolve it; mixed Killings are combined away to clear them; punishment or clash is dissolved by meeting or combination. Wealth meets Robbers and the Food God transforms them, or the Officer is generated to control them; Wealth meets Killings and the Food God controls the Killings to generate Wealth, or the Killings are combined away and the Wealth preserved. The Seal meets Wealth and Robbers dissolve it, or the Wealth is combined away to preserve the Seal. The Food God meets the Owl and the Killings are taken up so the Pattern forms, or Wealth is generated to protect the Food. Killings meet the Food God's control and the Seal comes to protect the Killings, then Wealth removes the Seal and keeps the Food. The Wounding Officer generates Wealth and Killings are revealed while the Killings meet combination. The Blade uses Officer or Killings and carries Wounding or Food, and a heavy Seal protects them. Established Prosperity or Monthly Robber uses the Officer and meets Wounding, and the Wounding is combined away; or uses Wealth and carries Killings, and the Killings are combined away. The chapter closes by refusing to be a machine: “The failures hidden inside forming vary in ten thousand ways, and this is only the outline… Such changes cannot be exhausted in words; they lie in the subtle understanding of the practised reader.”

Two public charts, worked through

Mao Zedong, 26 December 1893, Chen hour — Gui Si, Jia Zi, Ding You, Jia Chen. The Pattern is the Seven Killings: the month branch Zi hides Gui, the Seven Killings, revealed in the year stem. The chart forms, by Seal transforming the Killings — Jia Wood, the Direct Seal, is revealed twice, in the month and hour stems. But it forms with a blemish: the month branch Zi and the day branch You are in the “breaking” relation (Zi–You), a light blemish the classic counts under “no punishment, clash or injury”. The verdict our own checker gives is “formed, with a blemish” — and the note is honest about the limit: the classic's forming sentence asks for a strong body meeting controlled Killings, while this chart's Day Master is only middling in strength, so the Seal's transforming work carries more of the weight, and the strength of the formation depends on the luck pillars that follow.

1 October 1949, 3 p.m. — Ji Chou, Gui You, Jia Zi, Ren Shen. The Pattern is the Direct Officer: the month branch You hides Xin, the Officer, revealed in no stem, so the Pattern is taken from the month's primary stem. The chart forms — the Officer meets Wealth and Seal: Ji Earth, Wealth, is revealed in the year stem, and Gui and Ren Water, the Seals, are revealed in the month and hour stems, with no Wounding Officer anywhere in the stems. It carries the same light blemish as the first chart: the month branch You and the day branch Zi break each other. Two famous charts, both formed, both carrying the same small break — which is itself the lesson: a break is a blemish to note, not a verdict to pronounce, and a table that upgraded every break to a failure would condemn both charts against the published readings.

What this means in a reading

The Pattern tells you the skeleton and the Useful God tells you the medicine; forming, failing and rescue tell you whether the medicine can actually be taken. A formed Pattern with no blemish is a clear road; a formed Pattern with a blemish is a clear road with a pothole to watch; a failed Pattern with a rescue is a blocked road with a detour already built; a failed Pattern with no rescue is a road that waits for the luck pillars to supply what the birth chart lacks. That is why the classic ends the chapter where it began — with the Useful God sought in the month, and everything else judged against it. The next classic on the desk is the chapter On Pattern itself, and then the month-by-month climate table of the Qiong Tong Bao Jian.