Favourable phases

Meaning

The favourable phases are the ones that help a chart: the phases that bring it towards balance, or give it what its season lacks. The tradition calls the most needed the useful god, 用神 yòngshén, and the ones that help it the welcome gods, 喜神 xǐshén; together, 喜用神 xǐyòngshén. Their opposites, the phases a chart already has too much of, are the avoided gods, 忌神 jìshén, which Ulune calls simply less helpful.

Ulune gives them by two methods, each labelled. By balance, from the Day Master’s strength: a strong Day Master is helped by what spends its strength, a weak one by what feeds it, a balanced one by what the chart holds least. By climate, from the season: a chart born in winter wants warmth, one born in summer wants moisture. The two can differ, and the classics argue over which leads; Ulune shows both.

A favourable phase is a direction to lean, not a remedy to buy. The tradition reads it in time, a decade or a year that brings it is welcome, and in daily life, as a colour, a season, an activity or a kind of company that brings its quality. Ulune’s readings stop at saying which phases help and why.

In practice

• By balance, strong: the phases the Day Master produces, controls and is controlled by, output, wealth and power, help it spend its strength; the most needed is the one the chart holds least.
• By balance, weak: its own phase and the one producing it help, the most needed again the one the chart holds least.
• By balance, balanced: keep it so, by tending the two phases the chart holds least; the one it holds most is the least helpful.
• By climate: born in Hai, Zi or Chou, the winter months, the method asks first for Fire’s warmth; in Si, Wu or Wei, the summer months, for Water’s moisture; spring and autumn are mild, and the balance leads.
• Following charts: when Ulune also flags a dominant or a following structure, the help turns round, towards the phases the chart is already full of.
• Two people: the Relationship lens names the phases one chart favours that the other holds plenty of.

Across traditions

• In Japan and Korea the useful god is the yōjin of Shichū Suimei and the yongsin of saju, where finding it is often the heart of a reading.
• In Western astrology the nearest idea is the advice some astrologers give about an element a chart lacks, to cultivate its qualities: the same wish for balance, read from a count of elements rather than from a self’s strength.

Origin and history

The words changed meaning on the way. In Shen Xiaozhan’s Ziping Zhenquan, in the 18th century, the use god is the month’s god, the one that names the structure, and the other gods are judged by whether they serve it. The Di Tian Sui and Ren Tieqiao’s commentary, and most modern teachers after them, mean by it the phase the chart needs for balance, and that is the sense Ulune follows. The climate method has its own classic, the Qiong Tong Bao Jian, a Qing dynasty edition of an older text, which goes Day Master by Day Master and month by month; Xu Lewu commented both it and the Ziping Zhenquan, and his notes set the two methods side by side, as Ulune does.

How Ulune calculates it

From the balance of the phases and the three tests of strength, Ulune takes the helping families, output, wealth and power for a strong Day Master, its own phase and its resource for a weak one, and lists their phases from the least held to the most, the first being the most needed. For a balanced Day Master it takes the two phases the chart holds least, and the one it holds most as the least helpful. The climate comes from the season of the month branch, in its broad form; the classical tables, month by month for each Day Master, are not yet in Ulune.

Correspondences