Follow Output

Meaning

Following Output, 從兒格 cóng’ér gé, “following the child”, is the name some schools give a chart whose Day Master holds almost nothing of its own, with no root and no helper, and whose strongest force is output, the phase it produces. In the old image, output is the Day Master’s child, the Eating God and the Hurting Officer it brings forth; a self too slight to stand alone goes with its child. Ulune’s reading puts it so: following Output, the Day Master gives itself to what it produces, and some schools read a life carried by its talents and expression.

The tradition reads a person who finds themselves in what they make: gifts that carry them further than effort would, a life organised round expression, craft, performance or teaching. The classics like it best when the child has a child of its own, output flowing on into Wealth, talent becoming a livelihood.

It is a disputed reading, and Ulune says so. The flag stands beside the month’s structure, which it does not replace, and the favourable phases are shown turned round, with the reminder that schools disagree: a possibility to weigh, never a verdict.

In practice

• When Ulune flags it: when the Day Master’s own phase and the one producing it hold 20% of the chart’s points or less, no branch holds a stem of the Day Master’s phase, no stem of the year, month or hour is of its phase or the one producing it, and output is the strongest of output, wealth and power.
• Beside the structure: Ulune still names the month’s structure; the flag is added in the analysis and in the structure’s reading, with the share of support that raised it.
• The favourable phases turn round: when the chart is read as following, the helpful phases are output, wealth and power, phases the chart is already full of, and the Day Master’s own phase and its resource are the least helpful.
• With strength: such a Day Master is usually weak by Ulune’s three tests; the flag looks at the whole count rather than at the tests.
• What the classics look for: output that flows on into Wealth; they watch the Resource, which controls output, as the one force that would pull the chart back.

Across traditions

• In Japan and Korea the structure is the jūji-kaku of Shichū Suimei and the jonga-gyeok of saju.
• In Western astrology the closest picture is a chart read through a strong Mercury or Venus, or a full fifth house, when the Sun is weakly placed: the self found in what it makes.

Origin and history

The Di Tian Sui gives Following Output a verse of its own, which Ren Tieqiao’s commentary under the Qing explains: the self follows its child whatever its own strength, provided the child meets a child of its own, output producing Wealth. The same commentary separates true following, when nothing at all supports the self, from false following, when a little does, and reads both. The Ming books, the San Ming Tong Hui among them, already knew charts that go with their strongest force; Shen Xiaozhan’s Ziping Zhenquan, which reads every chart from its month, keeps them to the margins. Xu Lewu, who commented both the Di Tian Sui and the Ziping Zhenquan in the first half of the 20th century, set the two approaches side by side, and modern teachers still disagree on how often a chart truly follows.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune counts the five phases, each visible stem one point and each hidden stem by its weight, the month’s twice. When the Day Master’s own phase and the phase producing it hold 20% of the total or less, when no branch, the day’s included, holds a stem of the Day Master’s phase, and when no stem of the year, month or hour is of its phase or the one producing it, the chart is read as following; it compares the points of output, wealth and power, and the strongest names the structure, output first when two are level. Here output leads, and Ulune flags Following Output.

Correspondences