Wisdom

When you know something and tell people you know it, when you do not know something and admit that you do not know it, it is a display of wisdom.
When there is something you should know but you do not, when you mistakenly think you know something that you do not know, it is an anouncement of lack of wisdom.

In addition, I always remember:
To admit that there is something we do not know is a virtue. To pretend to know something that we do not know is a vice.

 

Ode to Winter Solstice

Ode to Winter Solstice

Shao Yong

 

Winter solstice divides Zi month into two halves.

Heaven’s heart has not changed at this point.

First yang yao starts right here.

The ten thousands of living things are not born yet.

Good wine is a little dilute.

High notes are just rare.

If anyone does not believe this,

Please put your inquiries to Pao Xi.

This poem is quite easy to understand but the level of appreciation varies with the cultural level of the reader. It is worthwhile reciting it frequently to observe how you progress.

 

Research is Important

New invention should always be welcome in the world of Chinese Metaphysics. However, the invention or discovery of a new theory must sit on solid grounds from the metaphysical point of view.

When Li Xu Zhong 李虚中 in the Tang Dynasty 唐朝 started the study of Four Pillars of Destiny 四柱推命學, he employed the 24 jie and qi 節氣 to define the beginning and the midpoint of the 12 months. Thus he was able to establish a method of assessing the timeliness of the five elements. His work was not complete as he used the year branch to represent the person and his analysis was based on special combinations of stem and branches known as Shen Sha 神煞. Xu Zi Ping 徐子平 in the Song Dynasty 宋朝 modified and expanded the work to have the day stem to represent the person and defined the 10 spirits based on the elemental relationship with the day stem. It then became a complete system.

Later, Zi Wei Dou Shu 紫微斗數 was invented and the charting method employed the Lunar Calendar. This new system does not depend on the timeliness of the five elements to define the brightness of the stars. It has its own foundation and is more romantic in a sense. I spent a lot of time to try to reinvent the charting method to use the Solar Calendar in order to avoid the leap month. However, the many case studies I accumulated proved that it simply did not work.

Likewise, I spent a lot of time to try to use the Lunar Calendar to do Four Pillars charting. It was just out of curiosity to see whether the calendar that everyone was familiar with in ancient China could be used instead of Solar Calendar. First I must admit that I was unable to establish a method to deal with the leap month to convince myself. Anyway, I examined all the cases I accumulated with different solar and lunar charts and found that the results were less than acceptable. Even though it affects only a little bit about the timeliness, it affects clashes and combinations a lot. The luck pillars also change with different points of entry.

Well, I do not consider it was a waste of time. It was in fact time well spent.

Lunar Calendar for BaZi charts?

First we have to know what is the Chinese Lunar Calendar. In this calendar, a year consists of 12 months with the first day of the month at New Moon. For some months, a month consists of 29 days while for the rest, a month consists of 30 days. 1 year consists therefore 354 days. There is a 11.24 days difference between a lunar year and a solar year. This will be compensated by adding a month to a leap year (閏年). The leap month (閏月) is the month without Zhong Qi. The natural outcome makes the lunar calendar very irregular. 

If the year, month and day are all described by a stem-branch binomial, then each month will have to change on the New Moon day. How do we assign the stem-branch binomial to the Run Yue (閏月)? No matter what you do, it will be extremely artificial. The year stem-branch binomial is to change on the New Year day which is the first New Moon day of the year. Since the day stem-branch is another sequence, it does not create any problem. Now you can see that such a calendar does not describe the natural flow of qi. 

Ever since the Four Pillars of Destiny 四柱推命學was invented by Xu Zi Ping 徐子平, the solar calendar was used. Zi Ping himself did not leave behind any document about his findings. The first collection of his work was found in Yuan Hai Zi Ping 淵海子平 written by Xu Sheng 徐升in the Song Dynasty 宋朝, not too much later than Xu Zi Ping. 

However, there is still a difficult and unsolved problem even when we use the solar calendar. It is the placement of the International Date Line.  It is unimaginable that we allow the day to change passing this line. However, since this line was chosen to avoid affecting populated areas, it has avoided the singular points (sorry to include a mathematical term here as I cannot think of anything better).