The Problem with Formulas

Translator's note. Why the classical formulas “work” and “fail” at the same time: every one of them is accurate with its conditions attached, and no book ever printed the conditions. Two reasons are given — secrecy, and the cost of woodblock printing — and two famous formulas are then dismantled and rebuilt: “when the year cycle repeats the luck cycle, either you die or someone else does,” and “when the wounding officer meets the officer, disaster of a hundred kinds.” There is also a fine argument against reading hidden stems.

1. With their conditions, all the formulas are exact

Every formula in every system of fate prediction is accurate, and every one is inaccurate. Add the conditions of use to a formula from the old books and it is accurate; ignore the conditions and apply it anywhere, and it is inaccurate.

Why did the ancients not write the conditions in the books? At least two reasons.

The first is secrecy. Learning was scarce in the old world, and a master with a small invention or a small discovery would not readily tell others, or even his own disciples. Guiguzi had only so much to teach, and Sun Bin and Pang Juan studied with him for decades — because he would not speak readily. One sentence every three months: a hundred sentences in twenty-five years. The Art of War and the Thirty-Six Stratagems were almost unobtainable in their time. Sunzi did not write them down; and even when written, he did not let them be seen, but now and then produced a single stratagem for you, and with that you prospered. Our ancestors were extremely secretive about transmitting knowledge — and that is exactly why so much excellent traditional culture was carried into the coffin, generation after generation, and lost. Secrecy is a national sorrow.

And because the ancients were like that, we now have a crowd of fraudulent “masters” with nothing in their bellies taking disciples. The phrase with which they fob off a disciple and conceal their own ignorance is: “that cannot be spoken.” The disciple, cheated, believes the master formidable and merely conservative. I tell you: he could teach you everything and you would still not learn it. And if he is holding back, how will you learn? If he is holding back and you are still paying him, are you not a fool? Tsinghua and Peking University would like nothing better than to turn every student into an expert; they teach desperately and the students still do not learn. Hold back on top of that and it is finished. So any master who says “this is secret, this cannot be spoken” is proving only that he does not know it at all.

The second is the limits of printing. The ancients began with woodblock printing, and even after Bi Sheng invented movable type in the Song, printing a book was expensive. So they wrote with the fewest possible characters to convey the most possible content. High cost meant the writer could not put down everything he wanted to say. Editions were small and dear; many could not afford books and had to borrow to study.

Take a formula we all know: “when the year cycle coincides with the luck cycle, either you die or someone else does.”

Does such a coincidence bring disaster?

Once you understand what we have said about useful and unfavourable gods, you will see that the old sentence is very accurate. When the annual and luck cycles arrive with identical stems and branches, the number of one or two elements suddenly surges, and a sudden surge in the number of an element is disaster. If the chart contains jiayin, the luck cycle is jiayin, and the year is jiayin, then six of the twelve positions of chart, luck and year have become wood. A sudden surge in wood brings disaster. Anything whose number suddenly multiplies in a short period brings disaster — just as a sudden multiplication of cancer cells gives a person cancer.

But not everyone with such a coincidence meets disaster. It depends on whether the doubled element becomes a useful or an unfavourable god. In chart, luck cycle and year taken together, an element whose stems and branches reach four or more is unfavourable; below four, useful. So it is easy to judge: has the doubled stem become unfavourable? That is the condition of use. If the chart contains yiwei, and the luck cycle is yiwei and the year is yiwei, then yi wood and wei earth are both useful gods, and the coincidence brings not trouble but one good thing after another — what kind of good thing depending on what has arrived.

As to whether one reads the hidden stems in the branches when judging at such a coincidence: read them if you like, but my theory does not. It is like signing a contract with you in business: I have no need to concern myself with the woman's handkerchief in your left pocket and the woman's bracelet in your right. People use hidden stems because their eight characters cannot read accurately and they must find a reason inside the branch. That is a theory of finding fault, not a theory of solving problems. If something is hidden, do you think it can play an important role? However powerful a hidden stem may be, if it does not come out it means nothing — the American aircraft carriers are powerful, but America has not dared sail them inside our twelve-mile limit; keep them hidden in some harbour and they are no threat to us at all. And if the hidden stem has already appeared among the visible stems, why look at the hidden one? The carrier has already opened fire on us; do we still need to know where it was hiding before? That is my view of hidden stems. Our system does not use them.

Another familiar formula: “when the wounding officer meets the officer, disaster comes from a hundred directions.”

Remember: the wounding officer does not mean only the wounding officer; it also covers the eating god. The officer does not mean only the direct officer; it also covers the seven killings.

Is the formula true? Someone wrote a whole book on it and never got to the bottom. Is it so complicated? No.

The condition is simple: look at the relation between the wounding officer and the officer.

If a useful god combines with or clashes an unfavourable god, no disaster. If an unfavourable god combines with or clashes a useful god, disaster.

If the relation is punishment or harm, and one of the two is useful and the other unfavourable, the result is bad — because punishment and harm are mere acquaintance, they cannot settle the other party. If both are unfavourable, then punishment, clash, combination or harm all bring disaster.

So judging useful and unfavourable comes first. Second, look at who has settled whom. Stare only at strength and weakness and your reading will usually be wrong.

From these two familiar formulas you should see: every formula has its conditions. With the conditions, all are accurate; without them, none is.

2. “Unconditional formulas” are the trade's way of hooking people

Take “when the year cycle coincides with the luck cycle, either you die or someone else does.” The sentence itself smells of the marketplace. What is the scope of “someone else”? Grandparents? Parents? Children? Does the same generation include classmates, army comrades, close friends? Does it include neighbours? There is no specified scope — which means that if in that year you attended anyone's funeral at all, the formula was perfectly accurate.

Unconditional formulas come in two kinds. One kind really is unconditional and accurate everywhere. For example: “a chart in which wealth combines with the owl-seal will make a name in his own professional circle whatever trade he follows”; “a male chart in which the day master and the wealth star at the gate clash will have a marital crisis.” These hit the mark every time, without conditions. The other kind is the marketplace kind, which claims to be accurate and is in fact a con: “when the year cycle coincides with the luck cycle, either you die or someone else does”; “when the white tiger sits at the head, without disaster there will be calamity”; “when the year god presses the luck, nothing goes well.”