Companion

Meaning

The Companion is a stem of the same phase and the same polarity as the Day Master: Jia for a Jia Day Master, Gui for a Gui. Its Chinese name, bǐjiān, means “shoulder to shoulder”: another of one’s own kind, standing at the same height. It is the first of the Ten Gods and the purest of the peers, the family of the same phase, and the classics read in it the people who walk beside us, friends, brothers and sisters, colleagues of equal rank, and the strength of standing on one’s own.

Ulune reads it as the Zi Ping school’s consensus does: self-reliance, peers and friends who stand at your level, and the art of sharing the stage fairly. A chart with Companions has its own ground under its feet. The tradition’s caution, where there are many, is that equals tend to want the same things, so that sharing, taking turns and choosing one’s own field matter.

Being the Day Master’s own phase, the Companion strengthens it: with the resource, it is one of the two families that support the self. For a Day Master that is weak it is welcome help; for one already strong it adds weight where expression, wealth or a challenge would bring more balance.

In practice

• On the board a Companion stands wherever a stem repeats the Day Master’s, among the stems or hidden in a branch: for a Jia Day Master, a Jia year stem, or the Jia hidden in Yin and in Hai.
• Its reading: shown, a Companion speaks of self-reliance, friends at your level and the art of sharing the stage; only in the branches, of a quiet self-confidence and of support from equals that comes when asked; absent, of a life met more on one’s own, with the suggestion to seek peers who share your ground.
• Strength: a Companion among the stems counts for the support test, and one hidden in a branch roots the Day Master.
• The structure: the Companion has none of its own. When the month branch is the Day Master’s Prosperity branch, Yin for Jia, Mao for Yi, Si for Bing, which holds its Companion, Ulune names the Prosperity structure (建祿格).
• Luck pillars and years: a decade whose stem is the Companion is a decade of your own kind, of self-reliance and partnerships of equals; a year, one of peers and of your own ground to hold.
• Two people: when the other’s Day Master is your Companion, you share a Day Master’s phase and polarity, peers who recognise each other.

Across traditions

• In Japan, Korea and Vietnam the Companion keeps its characters and its image: hiken in Japan’s Shichū Suimei, bigyeon in Korean saju, tỷ kiên in Vietnamese.
• In Western astrology the nearest picture is two people with the Sun in the same sign, or a planet returning to its own place: recognition, and a shared way of going at things.

Origin and history

The Song dynasty Yuanhai Ziping names the Companion first among the ten, and the classics after it give the peers to brothers, sisters and friends among the six kin. They weigh it, as every god, by the whole chart: a weak Day Master welcomes it as a helper, while for a strong one, the books say, the peers “share out the wealth”, the same phase competing for what the Day Master controls. The San Ming Tong Hui of the Ming lists the Companion’s situations one by one, with its friends and its rivals.

The Ziping Zhenquan, under the Qing, gives the Companion no structure of its own: a month of the Day Master’s own Prosperity branch is read by what the rest of the chart offers to use, wealth, an officer or an outlet. The Di Tian Sui’s line on the peers is the one Ulune follows: whether a companion helps or crowds depends on the balance of the whole.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune names a stem the Companion when its phase is the Day Master’s own, no step along the generating cycle, and their polarities agree, which makes it the same stem. It looks among the stems of the year, the month and the hour, and among the hidden stems of the four branches with their weights, but never at the day’s own stem, which is the Day Master. It counts the Companions shown and hidden: the reading says “shown” as soon as one stands among the stems, “hidden” if one is only in a branch, “absent” otherwise. The Companion counts for the root and support tests of strength, and a month of the Day Master’s Prosperity branch gives the Prosperity structure.

Correspondences