A Brief Word on the Underlying Logic of Bazi Reading

Translator's note. The gate into the Bazi material. Before any technique, Lü insists on the boundary: a birth chart can say what kind of thing will happen, never how much. Everything the trade promises beyond that — the size of a fortune, the height of a degree, the length of a life — he says outright cannot be delivered, and he uses his own students' refusal to take part in “duels” over those questions as the proof that the refusal is honest. Read this first; the eighteen essays that follow are all applications of this one boundary.

What is “underlying logic”?

Underlying logic is a way of thinking that starts from the nature of a thing and works out from there how its problems can be solved.

Its essence is finding the same within differences, and the unchanging within change. Only when you have grasped the underlying logic can you see a thing for what it is.

In one sentence: underlying logic is common sense. Only when you understand the underlying logic of something do you know what it can do, what it cannot do, and where its limits lie.

Take a car. A car moves because turning wheels generate friction against the road, and the road pushes back. That is its underlying logic, and it settles the matter: a car runs on roads. It does not fly and it does not sail. A ship, by the same token, moves because a screw propeller turns in water and generates thrust. Its underlying logic confines it to water. You cannot drive it onto a road, and you certainly cannot fly it.

Or take gold. Gold is valuable because it is scarce and because it endures. If the earth were paved with gold, gold would be worth no more than dog shit.

So what is the underlying logic of bazi reading — meaning here bazi as a time system — and what can it calculate, and what can it not?

There are two basic pieces of underlying logic.

1. People born under the same five-fold coincidence do not have the same fate.
2. People born under the same five-fold coincidence do not convert their fate-energy in the same direction.

By “five-fold coincidence” I mean the same year, month, day and hour of birth — which is to say, the same four pillars — plus the same sex. A “six-fold coincidence” adds the same birthplace.

From these two pieces of logic we can derive the limits of bazi calculation:

1. Bazi can make qualitative judgements, not quantitative ones.
2. The information in a bazi is not the same thing as the fact.

Bazi reading is a technique. It has places where it applies and places where it does not. An ECG machine measures heart electrical activity; that is what it is for. Insist on using an ECG to diagnose diabetes or cirrhosis and you are being absurd.

Speaking from my own experience: I have never met a five-fold coincidence, but it takes only a little thought to see that five-fold coincidences must have different fates, and must differ substantially.

Try this. Check the well-known rich men of this country. Are any two of them born under exactly the same bazi? Each of those men's charts stands for several hundred or several thousand people. If those hundreds or thousands were all as rich as the rich man, we would have heard of them, wouldn't we? And if that were how it worked, then all anyone would need is the birth time of a rich man's child, and a scheduled caesarean at that moment would produce another rich second generation. Wouldn't it?

The same test works on officials. You can look up the birth data of every eminent person you like. Are there five-fold coincidences among them? Behind each of those charts stand hundreds or thousands of people born under the same one. Where did they all go?

So: five-fold coincidences have different fates. That is underlying logic. It is common sense. It is fact.

To respect the fact is to respect yourself, and to respect others.

Lü-school bazi admits that bazi cannot calculate the level of wealth, cannot calculate the level of education, cannot calculate the size of an official misfortune or an injury, cannot calculate the length of a life. In short, it does not do quantitative things at all. Of all the bazi schools in China, only the Lü school dares to admit this. Only the Lü school admits that bazi is an ECG machine and not an all-purpose device. That is precisely what is most admirable about it.

Someone will say: “Just because the Lü school cannot calculate the level of wealth doesn't mean nobody can.” Yes — and if you put it that way, of course I can calculate it too. Without looking at the chart at all, by guessing, I might well be more accurate than you.

Someone else will say: “Lü-school readers want your height, the size of your backside, and how much flesh is on the soles of your feet before they will read you. People will laugh at that. How are you supposed to earn a living?”

Yes, you are right again. Science is not for earning a living. If earning a living is what you want, you need not study the Lü school at all — you need not study even traditional bazi. Learn a bit of patter and you are fully equipped.

Many “yixue masters” in Taiwan run dedicated courses in exactly that patter. No bazi required. Learn the script and you can make a living.

But come back to it: if you have thoroughly understood Lü-school theory, and on top of that you have mastered the patter in live practice — can you really not make a living?

Lately, in various group chats, I keep seeing people say that Lü-school students dare not practise, and they drag this or that student off to “duel” with traditional bazi readers — over the level of wealth, over the level of education, over life and death, over how many brothers a man has, and even, heaven help us, over a person's occupation.

The underlying logic of Lü-school theory states plainly what can be judged and what cannot. Insist on dragging Lü-school students into judging things that are “no better than guessing,” and whose brain is the sick one?

Others have tried to drag Teacher Lü himself into traditional groups to duel with the masters. Teacher Lü has already offended the entire traditional yixue world. Heaven knows how many pits have been dug for him to fall into. Do you seriously imagine he will walk into them obligingly? If Teacher Lü's head were as waterlogged as yours, those hundred and eighty thousand students would have scattered long ago.

And as for whether Lü-school students dare to practise — is that really your worry? Must practice happen in front of you to count as practice? Is practice inside one's own circle mere talk?

Respect science. Respect fact. Respect logic. I hope every Lü-school student keeps the original intention, fears no weather, and walks on bravely. The wheel of history never turns backwards.

By Yuruyi