Direct Resource

Meaning

The Direct Resource is a stem of the phase that produces the Day Master, of the other polarity: Gui for a Jia Day Master, Ren for a Yi, Ding for a Wu. It belongs to resource, the family of what nourishes and supports the self, and where the Indirect Resource is the knowledge one finds alone, the Direct Resource is the support one is given: the teacher, the home, the protection that lets a person grow.

Its name, zhèngyìn, is “the proper seal”: the seal of office, emblem of the authority that backs a person, joined here as a yin to a yang, a nourishment in balance. The classics also call it 印綬 yìnshòu, the seal and its ribbon, and they read it as learning, protection and rank, and as the mother among the six kin. Ulune reads it as the Zi Ping school’s consensus does: learning and support, care received and given, patience and protection. Its caution is the comfort it gives: with much of it, the classics warn of waiting to be carried, and they like it best with something to do.

Resource supports the Day Master, with the peers: for a weak self it is the first help to look for; for a strong one, more of it adds weight where an outlet, wealth or a challenge would bring balance.

In practice

• On the board: for a Jia Day Master, a Gui stem among the pillars, or the Gui hidden in Zi, Chou and Chen.
• Its reading: shown, support received and given, a love of learning, patience and protection; only in the branches, quiet support, care that is there without being asked for; absent, you may have learned to look after yourself, and the tradition suggests letting others help, and letting teachers in.
• Strength: as resource, it counts for the support test among the stems, and a month whose main qi is the resource’s phase meets the season test.
• The structure: when the month’s structure comes from its Direct Resource, revealed among the stems or as the month’s main qi, Ulune names the Direct Resource structure (正印格).
• Luck pillars and years: a decade of the Direct Resource is one of support and learning, of teachers, care and qualifications, a time to receive and to grow; a year, one of help received, of learning, and of care to accept.
• Two people: when the other’s Day Master is your Direct Resource, theirs produces yours: they support and nourish, you grow, a bond of care that runs mostly one way.

Across traditions

• In Japan it is called injū, the seal and its ribbon, in Shichū Suimei; Korean saju says jeongin, Vietnamese chính ấn.
• In Western astrology its themes are shared between the Moon and the fourth house, of home and roots, and Jupiter as the teacher: the same care and the same learning, read by planets and a house rather than by a relation of phases.

Origin and history

The Song dynasty Yuanhai Ziping names the proper seal beside the partial one, and the classics after it give the resource its many meanings: the mother, the teacher, learning and its titles, the protection of a patron. Its pairings follow the cycles. “The Officer and the Resource produce each other”: the Direct Officer produces it, so that duty turns into protection. “The Hurting Officer wearing the seal”: the Direct Resource controls the Hurting Officer, giving brilliance a discipline, one of the classics’ favourite remedies.

The Ziping Zhenquan, under the Qing, counts the Resource among the four favourable gods, to be supported and protected, and names its trouble: Direct Wealth, which controls it, so that the books speak of wealth spoiling the seal, the pursuit of means crowding out learning. The Di Tian Sui and Ren Tieqiao’s commentary read every resource by what the self does with the support it receives.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune names a stem the Direct Resource when its phase is four steps from the Day Master’s along the generating cycle, the phase that produces the Day Master, and their polarities differ. It looks among the stems of the year, the month and the hour and among the hidden stems of the branches with their weights, counts the Direct Resource shown and hidden, and reads it as shown, hidden or absent. Resource supports the Day Master in the strength tests, and the month gives the Direct Resource structure when the Direct Resource is the first of the month branch’s hidden stems, peers aside, to show among the stems, or, if none shows, the first of them.

Correspondences