Direct Wealth structure

Meaning

The Direct Wealth structure is the frame of a chart whose month brings Direct Wealth, the phase the Day Master controls, of the other polarity. Ulune’s reading puts it in a sentence: it frames a life around building, steady work, care with resources, and the satisfaction of what grows by effort. “Wealth” in BaZi is what the self can shape and manage, its means, its work and the material of its projects, rather than money as such.

The tradition reads practicality and reliability: someone who builds step by step, values what is earned, keeps things in order and looks after what has been entrusted to them. Such a chart often has a sense of reward, a feeling for quality and an attachment to the concrete results of work.

Its difficulty is a carefulness that becomes caution, or a measure of things by what they yield. The tradition looks for a Wealth that serves a life rather than the other way round, and Ulune reads the structure as a way of working, never as riches promised.

In practice

• When Ulune names it: the month branch holds the Day Master’s Direct Wealth and it comes first, shown among the stems before the month’s other hidden stems, or as the month’s main qi, peers aside, when nothing else shows.
• Its months, by main qi: Jia in Chou or Wei, Yi in Chen or Xu, Bing in You, Ding in Shen, Wu in Zi or Chou, Ji in Hai, Geng in Mao, Xin in Yin, Ren in Wu, Gui in Si.
• What the classics look for: a Day Master strong enough to carry its Wealth; the Eating God, which produces Wealth, talent turned into means; and the Officer, which Wealth produces and which keeps it safe. They watch the peers, above all Rob Wealth, which compete for it, and keep Wealth from overrunning the Resource, earning from crowding out learning.
• With strength: a strong Day Master makes the most of Wealth; a weak one is read with the peers and the Resource that help it carry the load. Ulune shows the strength beside the structure.
• In time, a decade of Direct Wealth is one of building, steady work and earnings, as the luck pillars’ readings say: a time when effort shows its results.

Across traditions

• In Japan and Korea the structure is the seizai-kaku of Shichū Suimei and the jeongjae-gyeok of saju.
• In Western astrology the closest theme is the second house and the earth signs, Taurus above all, with Venus as its ruler: resources, their care and what they make possible, read from places and signs rather than from the month.

Origin and history

Wealth is one of the four gods the Ziping Zhenquan, in the 18th century, counts as good, to be supported, and Shen Xiaozhan teaches that it needs a strong self, the Eating God to feed it and the Officer to protect it; the classics call the Direct Wealth the wealth that is one’s own, earned and kept, as against the Indirect Wealth shared with many. The Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui had already set out the sayings, wealth produces the officer, the peers divide the wealth, and Xu Lewu’s commentary of 1936 made them the common ground of modern teaching.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune names the Direct Wealth structure when, after the Prosperity and Sword Edge tests, the first of the month branch’s non-peer hidden stems to show among the stems of the year, month and hour is the Day Master’s Direct Wealth, or, if none shows, when that stem is the first of them. Direct Wealth is the stem of the phase the Day Master controls, of the other polarity: Ji for Jia, Wu for Yi, Xin for Bing, Geng for Ding, Gui for Wu, Ren for Ji, Yi for Geng, Jia for Xin, Ding for Ren and Bing for Gui.

Correspondences