Liuyao basics: casting records, eight palaces and relationships

A hexagram has six bottom-to-top positions. Liuyao Najia adds palace affiliation, stem-branch assignments, relationships and changes to interpret a question. Zengshan Buyi organizes these as distinct chapters, a useful reading order. Diagram calculations can be checked for consistency; historical divination anecdotes are not modern predictive experiments.

Write one clear question, its subject and time horizon, then date, time zone, method and raw outcomes. With coins, state face-to-number assignments and retain all six results bottom first. A useful template is question | local time and zone | method and convention | six raw results | figure and moving lines | rule edition. Leave unknowns blank and keep names and addresses out of public links.

Eight palaces group the 64 hexagrams into eight sets of eight. Palace phase provides the reference for relationship labels; an upper Qian trigram alone does not establish Qian-palace membership. Najia assigns stems and branches to inner and outer trigrams. In pure Qian the bottom three are Jia-Zi, Jia-Yin, Jia-Chen and the upper three Ren-Wu, Ren-Shen, Ren-Xu, listed bottom to top.

Shi and Ying are assigned from the hexagram’s place in its palace, not by arbitrarily calling the bottom line “self.” In the eight pure hexagrams Shi is at line six and Ying at line three; other figures require the appropriate table. They are three positions apart. Shi commonly references the querent or focal subject, while Ying’s role depends on the question; neither is a good/bad rank.

Using the palace phase as reference: what produces it is Parents; what it produces Descendants; what controls it Officer/Ghost; what it controls Wealth; the same phase Siblings. These five categories are conventionally called Six Relations and need not each appear. For Qian metal, earth is Parents, water Descendants, fire Officer/Ghost, wood Wealth and metal Siblings. BaZi instead references a Day Stem and polarity.

A moving line belongs to the original figure; its changed counterpart occupies the same position in the resulting figure. The position does not move. Polarity and rule-derived labels may change. If Qian’s bottom line becomes yin, compare bottom with bottom, not with the top. Preserve both figures and the assignment table before analyzing changed-line relationships.

Month and day are casting-time conditions requiring explicit boundaries; neither replaces the palace or assigned branches. Six Spirits commonly start from the Day Stem and follow Azure Dragon, Vermilion Bird, Gouchen, Tengshe, White Tiger and Xuanwu; Jia/Yi days start Azure Dragon at the bottom. Relationships come from palace phases instead. A line can carry Parents, Azure Dragon and Shi together. The names do not assert physical beings are present.

A home casting records a question and symbols; a survey records direction, openings, dimensions, light or noise. These are different kinds of evidence. A textual house association cannot reveal structural loads, leak sources or actual bearings. Keep traditional discussion separate from photos, measurement locations, devices and repeated readings. Resolve structural or safety issues through site inspection and qualified advice.