Seven Killings structure

Meaning

The Seven Killings structure is the frame of a chart whose month brings Seven Killings, the phase that controls the Day Master with the same polarity. The name sounds harsh and reads otherwise: Qīshā counts seven stems from the Day Master, and “killing” means the force of a challenge, never a harm to come. Ulune’s reading puts the structure in a sentence: it frames a life around challenge, pressure met with courage, ambition and the drive to take charge, at its best when that force is given a direction.

The tradition reads strength under strain: someone who rises to difficulty, takes responsibility in hard moments, and is often happiest with something demanding to do. The same chart can lead, protect, compete and decide; its energy is that of the person others turn to when things are difficult.

Its difficulty is a pressure that can be felt as relentless, or a drive that forgets to rest. The classics did not try to remove the force but to give it a form, and Ulune reads the structure in their spirit: a challenge to be met and directed, never a threat.

In practice

• When Ulune names it: the month branch holds the Day Master’s Seven Killings and it comes first, shown among the stems before the month’s other hidden stems, or as the month’s main qi, peers aside, when nothing else shows.
• Its months, by main qi: Jia in Shen, Yi in You, Bing in Hai, Ding in Zi, Wu in Yin, Ji in Mao or Chen, Geng in Si, Xin in Wu, Ren in Chen or Xu, Gui in Chou or Wei.
• What the classics look for: the Eating God, which tames the Killings, talent mastering pressure; or the Resource, which the Killings produce and which supports the self, pressure turned into learning, the Indirect Resource first. They keep it from mixing with the Direct Officer, which would crowd the self with two powers.
• With strength: the classics like a Day Master strong enough to stand level with its Killings; a weaker one is read with the Resource or the Eating God that carries it. Ulune shows the strength beside the structure.
• In time, a decade of Seven Killings is one of challenge, responsibility and ambition, as the luck pillars’ readings say: a time that rewards courage and a clear aim.

Across traditions

• In Japan and Korea the structure goes by its gentler name too, the partial officer: henkan-kaku in Shichū Suimei, pyeongwan-gyeok in saju.
• In Western astrology the closest theme is Mars and Saturn strongly placed, the drive to meet a contest and the tests that build strength: the same pressure, read through planets rather than through the month.

Origin and history

The Song dynasty’s Yuanhai Ziping sets Seven Killings beside the Direct Officer as the two faces of power, and the San Ming Tong Hui gathers the sayings that teach how to handle it: the Eating God controls the Killings, the Killings and the Resource produce each other. Shen Xiaozhan’s Ziping Zhenquan, in the 18th century, counts it among the four forceful gods, to be tempered rather than avoided, and shows how a tempered Seven Killings makes a chart of command. The Di Tian Sui, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary, adds that the same force weighs on a weak self and lifts a strong one, a balance Ulune shows rather than judges.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune names the Seven Killings structure when, after the Prosperity and Sword Edge tests, the first of the month branch’s non-peer hidden stems to show among the stems of the year, month and hour is the Day Master’s Seven Killings, or, if none shows, when that stem is the first of them. Seven Killings is the stem of the phase that controls the Day Master’s, of the same polarity: Geng for Jia, Xin for Yi, Ren for Bing, Gui for Ding, Jia for Wu, Yi for Ji, Bing for Geng, Ding for Xin, Wu for Ren and Ji for Gui.

Correspondences