Winning the Contract: Direction and the Right Gift

Translator's note. The most practical piece in this layer, and the one with the sharpest single idea: that a gift is not a bribe but a key, and only one key fits. The parable is a truckload of hare meat that won nothing and four roast ducks that closed the deal. The technical premise — that a corner direction has to be worked as two separate mountains — is set out in this archive's piece on the twenty-four directions; here it is only what the case requires.

Getting rich and winning a particular piece of business are not the same problem, and this is the first thing the method separates.

An ordinary wealth adjustment, of the kind described elsewhere in this archive, supports the outcome: it makes money more likely. It does not specify the route. A market stall, a construction bid, a debt collected — all may benefit, but none is aimed at. If what you need is for a specific client to sign a specific contract, the adjustment has to aim.

Three factors decide it:

1. The direction you travel to negotiate.
2. The seal star (枭印, xiaoyin) — the resource star that governs documents, contracts and orders.
3. Both of them in a favourable relation with the day master, at the same time.

All three have to line up. A favourable direction with a seal star that never reaches the day master produces nothing; a well-placed seal star with travel in the wrong direction produces nothing. The business you go out to win is not money. It is the seal star — a document, a signature, an order — and money is what later follows from having it.

The author extends the point to states, and it is a fair illustration: no country can manage every neighbour in all 360 degrees at once. Which neighbour it can deal with depends on which direction that neighbour lies in and whether the configuration at that moment supports it. The same person, going out on the same day to negotiate in twenty-four different directions, will close twenty-four different outcomes.

The direction, in one paragraph

The direction in the case is 巽 — the south-east corner. In this system 巽 is not an element and not a single direction. It is half 辰 earth and half 巳 fire — two adjacent mountains, each occupying half of the corner — and it has to be worked as two.

(The argument for this, and against the classical reading of 乾 as metal and 巽 as wood, is set out in this archive's piece on the five-element properties of the twenty-four directions. All that is needed here is the consequence: 辰 and 巳 are separate addresses, and a case that treats them as one will be right about half the time.)

The worked case

Male: 辛酉 乙未 甲寅 癸酉 Luck pillar: 壬辰 Year: 己亥

Direction. 巽 — that is, 辰 and 巳, treated separately, because they are separate mountains.

Which seal stars reach the day master. The day master is 甲. Water is the seal star, and there are three of them: 癸, 亥, 壬.

• 癸 — reaches the day master. It sits on the hour stem, at the gate, in direct relation with 甲.
• 亥 — reaches it closely. The year branch 亥 combines with the day branch 寅, which brings 亥 under the day master.
• 壬 — does not reach it at all.

What happens without adjustment

Go south-east and the business obtained is the business of 癸 — through both halves, by different routes.

In the 辰 direction: 辰 does not relate to 甲 directly, so on its own it yields nothing. But 辰 is the water storehouse. Arriving there brings 辰's energy into the body, and the year's water stars — 癸, 亥, 壬 — enter that storehouse. 癸, already at the gate and already in relation with the day master, is drawn into play. Separately, 辰 combines with the hour branch 酉, which activates the hour stem 癸. Two paths, same result.

In the 巳 direction: 巳 does relate to 甲 — it harms the day branch 寅, which brings 巳 under the day master. But because the energy of a direction exceeds the energy of a time, 巳 also clashes away 亥, the seal star with the closest relation to the day master. The 亥 business is lost. What survives is 癸 again: 巳 combines with the hour branch 酉, activating 癸.

The lesson of the pair. Both halves deliver 癸's business, but they deliver different things alongside it. Direction and seal star have to be read together; either one alone gives half an answer, and half an answer is how most consultations go wrong.

The adjustment

If the aim is to make the business come faster and larger, the lever is 酉 — because it is 酉 that lets the energy of 辰 and 巳 act on 癸 once it is inside the body. So 癸 and 酉 become the primary pair.

Feng shui. Strong favourable condition for 癸, 酉, 辰 and 巳. 癸 and 酉 first, since they are what converts arrival into a signed contract; 辰 and 巳 next, since they are where you are going.

One boundary has to be stated. This adjustment wins the business. It does not determine whether the business makes money. Plenty of people have gone bankrupt on work they won. Whether the south-east contract is profitable is a separate question, belonging to wealth prediction, not to this remedy.

Direction of travel. 辰 and 巳 are both favourable elements in this year, so travel there is sound on that count as well. 辰 is the wealth star and 巳 the output star, which is the source of wealth; movement toward them carries the information of income.

And yet — this is the honest part — the author gives the odds. Ask whether a man will make money going south-east and you will be right about seven or eight times in ten. In the remaining cases he wins no contract and earns only a wage. A favourable direction makes money possible; it does not manufacture the order. Two separate links in one chain.

If the seal star were unfavourable instead, the two outcomes would be different and worse: either the business cannot be closed at all, or it closes and drags a train of disputes and litigation behind it. An unfavourable seal star that has not been subdued does not produce a clean win. It produces a win with a bill attached later.

Food. Favour 酉; avoid 卯.

酉 is the intermediary in this whole configuration, so reinforcing it at the table helps. 卯 is the opposite: entertain a client over hare and he goes home and gradually stops taking your calls. The author's point is not that the food is magic but that a business dinner is part of the configuration, and a dinner in the 卯 direction of your own home is a different event from one in the 酉 direction.

People. Work with people born in a 癸酉 year, or at least with people of the rooster. Do not take a rabbit into a negotiation.

The gift. This is the passage worth remembering.

The man knew his client liked hare. His home district had plenty. He drove a truckload of hare meat to the client — and did not get the contract. The client may not even have liked duck. He sent four roast ducks — and got it. Because 酉 metal was the element that solved his problem, not the element the client preferred.

The general principle is a screw. A gift is not valued by its price; it is valued by whether it fits. When a wheel comes off, a gold bolt is useless and a rusty one of the right thread will get you home. Gift-giving works the same way, and the author is pointed about the alternative: pleasing the recipient is psychology, and psychology is a technique for persuasion, not for fit. A hundred roses may fail where a stalk of grass succeeds, because on that day one of them is the element that closes the gap and the other is not.

Clothing and flowers follow the same rule: white, metal element. If white flowers look thin, add white lilies among other colours — the point is the white, not the bouquet.

Which direction to go. Where the direction is still open, 癸 is the year's easiest direction for winning work and 丁 is the worst: no orders, and the travel and the entertaining are simply spent. This is not only for the man himself. Send fifty salesmen out in the morning and the direction each one travels decides whether the day produces fifty signed orders or fifty wasted trips.

Ornament. A wooden tiger. 寅 is the day branch; 寅 combines with 亥 and softens the clash that 巳 would otherwise deliver to the 亥 seal star. Small hinge, but the whole configuration turns on it.

The realistic promise

The author closes with the appropriate modesty, and it is worth quoting for its shape rather than its size.

After a full adjustment, there is almost no negotiation that produces nothing. A hundred-million contract may come back as five million. Grow one hundred jin of scallions for a restaurant and, unadjusted, the restaurant may take none; adjusted, it may take fifteen. The remedy's meaning is that there is business, and some of it closes. How much closes depends on the strength of the adjustment, not on the consultant's confidence.

Even a cabbage seller should carry the cabbages in the right direction. Go the right way and they sell quickly; go the wrong way and they do not sell.