Rob Wealth

Meaning

Rob Wealth is a stem of the same phase as the Day Master but of the other polarity: Yi for a Jia Day Master, Jia for a Yi, Ding for a Bing. Like the Companion it is a peer, one of the self’s own kind; but where the Companion stands shoulder to shoulder, Rob Wealth is the sibling with a different temper, the teammate who is also a rival for the same place.

Its Chinese name, jiécái, “robbing wealth”, comes from the cycles: as the same phase of the other polarity, it controls the Day Master’s Direct Wealth, and the old books saw in it the one who shares, or takes, what the self has gathered. Ulune reads it as the Zi Ping school’s consensus does, without the threat: rivals and teammates at once, competition, boldness, and a readiness to share or to take risks.

Like every peer, Rob Wealth strengthens the Day Master. For a weak Day Master it is courage and allies; for a strong one, the classics advise giving its energy somewhere to go, a contest worth entering, a venture shared on fair terms, a talent to put to work.

In practice

• On the board: for a Jia Day Master, a Yi stem among the pillars, or the Yi hidden in Mao, Chen and Wei.
• Its reading: shown, a competitive streak, boldness with resources and peers who push you as much as they help, with the care of keeping shares fair; only in the branches, a quieter drive to keep up, ambition held in reserve; absent, competition may move you less, and the tradition suggests welcoming a little friendly rivalry.
• Strength: as a peer, Rob Wealth counts for the support test among the stems and roots the Day Master from a branch.
• The structure: for a yang Day Master, a month in the branch of its Peak, its Sword Edge, which holds its Rob Wealth (Mao for Jia, Wu for Bing and for Wu, You for Geng, Zi for Ren), gives the Sword Edge structure (羊刃格). The yin stems’ Sword Edge is disputed, and Ulune leaves it out.
• Luck pillars and years: a decade of Rob Wealth is a decade of competition and boldness, shared ventures and rivals who spur you on, a time to keep generosity and fairness in balance; a year, one of rivals and partners who spur you on.
• Two people: when the other’s Day Master is your Rob Wealth, you share a phase but not a polarity: peers who recognise each other, and at times want the same ground.

Across traditions

• In Japan, Korea and Vietnam it keeps its characters: gōzai in Shichū Suimei, geopjae in Korean saju, kiếp tài in Vietnamese.
• In Western astrology its themes are spread between the third house, of brothers, sisters and neighbours, and the competitive drive of Mars: the same matters, read by places and planets rather than by a relation of phases.

Origin and history

The Yuanhai Ziping names Rob Wealth second among the ten, beside the Companion, and the Song and Ming books read the peers together as brothers, friends and rivals. Its name records the oldest reading: where a chart is already full of its own phase, the peers divide what it holds, and the classics speak of fortunes shared out or contested. The same books praise it where the Day Master is weak, for a weak self needs allies, and they note that an Officer, which controls Rob Wealth, gives its force a frame.

The Ziping Zhenquan, under the Qing, reads the Sword Edge, the strongest form of Rob Wealth, as a blade that wants a hand to hold it: an Officer or Seven Killings to give its force a direction. The Di Tian Sui’s principle governs here as everywhere: no god is good or bad in itself, only well or badly placed in the balance of the whole.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune names a stem Rob Wealth when its phase is the Day Master’s own, no step along the generating cycle, and their polarities differ: the yin stem of a yang Day Master’s phase, the yang stem of a yin one’s. 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 Rob Wealth shown and hidden, and reads it as shown, hidden or absent. It counts for the root and support tests of strength; and when the month branch is a yang Day Master’s Sword Edge, the branch of its Peak, the structure is the Sword Edge structure.

Correspondences