Indirect Wealth

Meaning

Indirect Wealth is a stem of the phase the Day Master controls, with the same polarity: Wu for a Jia Day Master, since Wood holds Earth in its roots; Ren for a Wu, since Earth banks Water. Wealth, in BaZi, is what the self can take hold of and shape: resources, work, the material world. Its two gods divide it by the way it comes, and Indirect Wealth is the wealth that comes from outside the routine.

Its name, piāncái, is “partial wealth”, partial in the classics’ sense of two stems of one polarity, a relation that leans to one side. The tradition reads in it opportunity and movement: ventures, trade, contacts, money that comes and goes, and the open hand that gives as easily as it gathers. Ulune reads it as the Zi Ping school’s consensus does: opportunities, ventures and windfalls, generosity and a broad, open hand; in the old map of the six kin it was also the father.

To control a phase takes strength, and the classics weigh Indirect Wealth against the Day Master: a strong self can carry it and put it to use, while for a weak one the books advise building the self first, so that opportunities do not outrun the means to hold them.

In practice

• On the board: for a Jia Day Master, a Wu stem among the pillars, or the Wu hidden in Chen, Xu, Yin and Si.
• Its reading: shown, an eye for opportunity, generosity, and resources that come through ventures, contacts and timing; only in the branches, openings that arrive quietly, through people and unplanned encounters; absent, you may prefer steady paths to bets, and the tradition suggests staying open to the unexpected opening.
• Strength and balance: wealth draws on the Day Master; when the Day Master is strong, wealth is among the phases that bring balance.
• The structure: when the month’s structure comes from its Indirect Wealth, revealed among the stems or as the month’s main qi, Ulune names the Indirect Wealth structure (偏財格).
• Luck pillars and years: a decade of Indirect Wealth is one of opportunity, of ventures, travel and contacts, resources that come and go, a time to take openings with a steady hand; a year, one of openings, best met with a steady plan.
• Two people: when the other’s Day Master is your Indirect Wealth, your Day Master controls theirs: you tend to steer and organise, they to ground and give form, a practical bond at its best with respect.

Across traditions

• In Japan, Korea and Vietnam it keeps its name: henzai in Shichū Suimei, pyeonjae in Korean saju, thiên tài in Vietnamese.
• In Western astrology its themes are spread between the second house, of resources, and Jupiter’s openings and good timing: the same matters, read by a house and a planet rather than by a relation of phases.

Origin and history

The Song dynasty Yuanhai Ziping names the two wealths together, the partial and the proper, and the classics after it read them as the means of life: what the self works on, earns and spends. The Ming books add their images: Indirect Wealth is the wealth of the many, of trade and of luck, shared and passed on, where Direct Wealth is the wealth of the household. They also chain it to its neighbours: the Eating God produces it, talent turning into income, and it produces Seven Killings in turn, opportunity bringing its own pressure.

The Ziping Zhenquan, under the Qing, counts Wealth among the four favourable gods, to be supported and protected, chiefly from the peers, which compete for it; the Companion is the one that controls it. The Di Tian Sui reads every wealth by the strength of the one who holds it.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune names a stem Indirect Wealth when its phase is two steps from the Day Master’s along the generating cycle, the phase the Day Master controls, and their polarities agree. 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 Indirect Wealth shown and hidden, and reads it as shown, hidden or absent. Wealth draws on the Day Master in the strength tests, and the month gives the Indirect Wealth structure when Indirect Wealth 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