Follow Power

Meaning

Following Power, 從殺格 cóngshā gé, “following the Killings”, 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 power, the phase that controls it: the Direct Officer and Seven Killings. Power in BaZi is what gives the self a shape, rules, duties, a role and the pressure to rise to it; a self too slight to stand against it goes with it instead. Ulune’s reading puts it so: following Power, the Day Master goes with what controls it, and some schools read a life carried by its role, its duties and the structures it serves.

The tradition reads a person who finds themselves through a calling larger than themselves: an institution, a discipline, a team or a cause they give their energy to, and who grows in stature by serving it. The classics like it best with Wealth to feed the power, a flow that carries the whole chart in one direction.

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 power 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.
• A nuance: Ulune turns the phases round in the same way for every following chart; for this one, the classics would rather keep output away, since output controls the power the self follows, and they keep Wealth, which feeds it.
• 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.

Across traditions

• In Japan and Korea the structure is the jūsatsu-kaku of Shichū Suimei and the jongsal-gyeok of saju.
• In Western astrology the closest picture is a chart led by a strong Saturn or a full tenth house, of role and standing, when the Sun is weakly placed: the self found in what it serves.

Origin and history

The Ming books, the San Ming Tong Hui among them, already describe a self so slight that it gives itself to the Killings around it, and they read such a chart, against first appearances, as one that can rise high in the service of others. The Di Tian Sui, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary under the Qing, gives the rule for every following chart, to go with the strongest force, and separates true following from false. 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. When power leads, Officer and Killings together, Ulune flags Following Power.

Its favourable phases follow the strength rule Ulune applies to every following chart: a Day Master too slight to stand is helped by what the chart is full of, so output, wealth and power all count as help, the one the chart holds least first, and its own phase and its resource are the least helpful. Some classics read Follow Power differently: they keep output away, since output controls the power the self follows, and keep Wealth, which feeds it. Ulune keeps the one rule for every following chart, and its reading says so.

Correspondences