Prosperity structure

Meaning

The Prosperity structure, 建祿格 jiànlù gé, “the stipend established”, is the frame of a chart whose month branch is the Day Master’s own stipend: the branch of its Prosperity stage, which holds the Day Master’s own stem, as its main qi or, for Wu and Ji, close behind Fire’s. Where the other structures are named after a god the month brings, this one is named after the self: the Day Master was born in the season of its strength and stands on its own ground. Ulune’s reading puts it in a sentence: it frames a life around self-reliance, the Day Master standing in its own month and building by its own hands rather than by inheritance.

The tradition reads independence and endurance: someone who has what they need within, prefers to earn their own way, and keeps going where others would wait for help. The old books add that such charts often make more than they inherit, which is the sense of Ulune’s reading.

Its question is what all that strength is for. A self that is already full needs something to spend itself on, and the classics read this structure by the other gods that show beside it. Ulune reads it as self-reliance, never as a fortune promised or a help refused.

In practice

• When Ulune names it: before any hidden stem is looked at, when the month branch is the Day Master’s stipend: Jia in Yin, Yi in Mao, Bing in Si, Ding in Wu, Wu in Si, Ji in Wu, Geng in Shen, Xin in You, Ren in Hai, Gui in Zi.
• With strength: in season and rooted in its own month, such a Day Master is always strong by Ulune’s three tests, and the favourable phases by balance are those it produces, controls and is controlled by, unless the chart is also flagged as dominant.
• What the classics look for: since the month gives the self rather than a god to use, they seek the use among the other stems: the Officer, to give the strength a role; Wealth, with output to produce it, to give it work; or Seven Killings, tempered, to give it a challenge.
• The same branch as a star: wherever it stands, the stipend is the Prosperity star; in the month it gives this structure.
• In time, a luck pillar or a year in the stipend’s branch brings the Prosperity star for its while; the structure itself belongs to the birth chart.

Across traditions

• In Japan and Korea the structure is the kenroku-kaku of Shichū Suimei and the geollok-gyeok of saju, after the name both give to the Prosperity stage.
• In Western astrology the closest picture is a planet in its own sign, its domicile, acting with its own means and at home: self-reliance read from a planet’s place rather than from the month.

Origin and history

The stipend in the month is one of the oldest frames of the Zi Ping school. The Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui name it among the structures, and an old verse of the school says that the stipend born in the month likes Wealth and the Officer to show among the stems, since a strong self wants something to do. Shen Xiaozhan’s Ziping Zhenquan, in the 18th century, gives it a chapter of its own, joins to it the “monthly rival”, the month of a yin Day Master’s Rob Wealth, and takes its use from the other gods: the Officer, Wealth, Seven Killings or output. Xu Lewu’s commentary of 1936 kept that reading.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune compares the month branch with the Day Master’s stipend before anything else: Yin for Jia, Mao for Yi, Si for Bing and Wu, Wu for Ding and Ji, Shen for Geng, You for Xin, Hai for Ren and Zi for Gui, Earth following Fire. If they match, the structure is the Prosperity structure, whatever the hidden stems. The Ziping Zhenquan’s “monthly rival” is not joined to it: a yin Day Master born in its Rob Wealth’s month is named by that month’s other hidden stems.

Correspondences