Balance of the phases

Meaning

A BaZi chart is made of the five phases: each stem and each hidden stem is Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal or Water. The balance of the phases says how much of each the chart holds, and so which phases fill it and which it lacks. It is the ground of everything the analysis says after it: the Day Master’s strength, the structure and the phases that help.

The classics weigh a chart by eye and by rule, the season first, then the roots and the stems; Ulune counts, with a method it states and the reader can check. The count is a picture, not a score: a chart full of Water is not better or worse than one full of Fire, and a phase the chart lacks is a theme to tend, not a hole. The tradition’s ideal, in the Di Tian Sui’s words, is a balance where the phases flow into one another, each feeding the next.

Each phase also stands in a family to the Day Master: its own phase, the one it produces, the one it controls, the one that controls it and the one that produces it. The balance is read through those families: how much of the chart supports the self, how much it spends, how much shapes it.

In practice

• In the analysis, the five phases stand as bars, each with its points and its share, and each opens a reading that lists where its points come from, stem by stem and hidden stem by hidden stem.
• Much or little: a phase holding 27.5% of the chart or more is read as plentiful, one under 6% as scarce, with what the tradition suggests for each; between the two, it says nothing more.
• Support: the Day Master’s own phase and the one producing it, together, are the chart’s support; at 80% or more, or 20% or less, Ulune also looks for a dominant or a following structure.
• The first read names the phase the chart holds most and the one it holds least.
• Two people: the Relationship lens names the phases each chart could bring the other, those one favours or lacks and the other holds plenty of, a fifth of its points or more.

Across traditions

• In Western astrology the same idea is the count of the elements, fire, earth, air and water, and of the modes, sometimes weighted by planet, as many software programs show; four elements rather than five, and planets rather than stems.
• In Japan and Korea the count of the five phases, gogyō and ohaeng, is the first table of many Shichū Suimei and saju readings, often drawn as a pentagon.
• In Feng Shui the same five phases are read in space rather than in time: each direction of a home and each of the nine flying stars has its phase, and their balance is weighed the same way, by what produces and what controls.

Origin and history

The five phases and their cycles are older than BaZi: the Huainanzi, in 139 BC, sets out how they produce and overcome each other through the seasons. BaZi’s classics weighed them without numbers. The Yuanhai Ziping of the Song asks whether the Day Master is in season and rooted; the Di Tian Sui, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary, makes balance and flow the measure of a chart; the Ziping Zhenquan reads the month first. Counting with points is a modern teaching aid, common in the manuals of the 20th century and since, and every school weighs the hidden stems a little differently, which is why Ulune states its own weights.

How Ulune calculates it

Each visible stem counts one point, the Day Master’s too. Each hidden stem counts its weight: 100 is one point, so a branch with a single stem gives it one point, and a branch with three gives 0.6, 0.3 and 0.1. The month branch’s hidden stems count twice, for the season. Four pillars make nine points, three make seven. Each phase’s share is its points over the total, and the support is the share of the Day Master’s phase and of the one producing it.

Correspondences