Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Ten Spirits 十神 (5) - Wealth

Wealth is what belongs to you. Anything that is under your control is your wealth. Do not take it as just money or your asset. It includes people under your control and even situation under your control. In the old days in China, husband and wife relationship is also a control-and-being-controlled one. Therefore, Proper Power is the husband of a woman while Proper Wealth is the wife of a man.

正財 - Proper Wealth. The narrower meaning is money made by proper means. You work and therefore deserve to be paid. In the broader sense, whatever that is under your control because of your effort is Proper Wealth. For a man, a legally married wife is his Proper Wealth.

偏財 - Unbecoming Wealth. The narrower meaning refers to money made not by proper effort. For example, money won by gambling is considered not made by your hard work and is therefore not proper wealth. It also includes money made by running a business that is not considered proper from an ethical point of view. In the old days in China, a man could have more that one wife. Apart from the first wife, the others were known as concubines. Concubines are represented by Unbecoming Wealth.

In the modern world we have to be careful to consider what is Proper Wealth and what is Unbecoming Wealth with some flexibility.

Joseph Yu 

1 comment:

Hbaay said...

Hi Master Yu, I'm hoping to learn all I can as my husband and I feel like we've been living in the twilight zone the past 7 yrs. Before that we always had a pretty good life. We've been through the most horrible family betrayal one could imagine along with friends we've had all our lives start to act strange and are no longer friends. I am afraid and somewhat frozen on what to do. I tried selling our home last yr. and even more strange things happened and it didn't sell. I feel like we have some sort of black cloud over us. What bothers me is we're both extremely intuitive but can't figure it out. Thank you for your writings. xox Hailee