The Advancing and Retreating Spirits in BaZi: Reading the Three Days That Turn Back

A man in his fifties booked a reading about a shop he was opening. Lease signed. Partner lined up. Two weeks before the launch the landlord stopped answering, the partner took a salaried job, and his own bank asked for a document it had not wanted in eleven years. He wanted a planet to blame.

I asked for his day pillar and counted forward from it in the sixty-day cycle. He was standing on the third of the three days the old manual calls retreat. The count had nothing to say about the landlord. It told me something about the launch.

Jin shen and tui shen (進神退神), the advancing and retreating spirits, are day-level timing markers in Chinese astrology that divide the sixty-day stem-branch cycle into fifteen-day windows, twelve of which carry forward motion and three of which carry crossing, retreat and latency. The sixty-day cycle itself is the sexagenary count that runs through the whole system.

The fifteen-day count

The chapter belongs to the 三命通會, a Ming manual first printed in 1578, and it opens by naming its own source, a diviner called Yan Dongsou. His unit is fifteen days, and he divides that unit twice. 十五日為一候，十二日為進神候，外三日為交退伏神候. Fifteen days to a period. Twelve of them are the advancing period. The three left over are the period of crossing, retreat and latency, and they come in that order. Fifteen days is also about the spacing the Chinese calendar gives its solar terms, twenty-four of which were fixed in the Taichu calendar of 104 BC.

Then he gives the seats. 甲子 is the first advancing day. The days that follow it, 丙子, 丁丑, 戊寅, are the three that turn. 己卯 opens the next window and is the second advancing seat. The third is 甲午, the fourth is 己酉, and the cycle starts again.

I worked the placement out on paper, because the manual lists four seats and never says why four. There are four because fifteen divides sixty. The seats fall on days one, sixteen, thirty-one and forty-six of the cycle, and four windows of fifteen days fill sixty exactly with nothing left over at the end of the loop. A cycle of motion carries four openings, and each runs twelve days before it breaks for three.

What the three days are called

The names arrive with their own verdicts attached. 值進神則發跡亨快. On an advancing day, the start of things goes quickly. Then the other three. 值交神則庶事不諧. On the crossing day, matters do not harmonize. 值退神則官資降黜. On the retreating day, rank is reduced. 值伏神則所作留滯. On the latent day, what you set moving sits where you left it.

Three days, three ways of not going forward, and the manual keeps them separate, because the difference is the part I use. Crossing is when two things fail to meet. Retreat is when ground is given up. Latency is the day nothing happens at all, and the manual counts that as an event in its own right. Most people I read for can tell those three apart in their own week without any chart, and the count simply gives the difference a date.

One line keeps the seats from becoming a promise. 經云，進神四座兼奇特，貴煞相扶為福力. The four seats are remarkable, but the support has to come from noble markers elsewhere in the chart, and a seat on its own delivers nothing.

Two rival accounts, and why they disagree

The compiler did not work alone, and the same chapter prints two other versions beside his.

The first comes from the Hu Zhongzi. 順太嵗而行曰進神，逆太嵗而行曰退神. Walking with the year star is advancing. Go against it and you are retreating. 逢進神則文章頴鋭，遇退神則智識暗昧. Under that reading, an advancing day sharpens the writing and a retreating day dims the understanding.

Notice what that version needs. It needs the year, which means the answer changes every twelve months. The Tai Sui article covers the year star itself. Yan Dongsou's count does not need it, since it runs off the day pillar alone and gives the same answer in any year.

The second account, from the Guangxin collection, is simpler again. Take the first four stems and the first four branches, 甲乙丙丁 and 子丑寅卯, and call those advancing. Reverse them, 丁丙乙甲 and 卯寅丑子, and call those retreating. Advancement here means moving in the direction the sequence is written. Retreat is any motion against it.

Two systems, two answers, and a reader holding both would sometimes find the same day forward on one count and backward on the other. The chapter does not hide this.

The compiler's own objection

What follows is the passage I use most with clients. 若干支俱退者，主稱意中有不稱意者隨之. When both stem and branch run backward, the thing that pleases you arrives with something attached to it. He gives a pair to show the mechanics. 庚戌 meeting 甲寅 is advancing. The same day meeting 乙巳 is retreating, because the distance in the count runs the other way.

Then he slows down for the awkward cases. 不在本旬者慢. Days outside the current ten-day block act more slowly. And finally the line that made me trust the book. 是只有進退而無交伏，恐非是. The position that there are only advance and retreat, with no crossing and no latency, looks wrong to me. A two-part version was evidently in circulation, and the compiler refused it. He wanted the three days kept distinct because collapsing them into one would lose the part that matters.

What a descent is for

Jung borrowed a Greek word for the movement that turns inward. In book eleven of the Odyssey, Odysseus does not sail for home. He sails to the hall of Hades and questions the dead, and classical readers called that episode the nekyia. Jung took the term for what he called the introversion of the conscious mind into the deeper layers of the psyche, and then he made a claim about its purpose. The nekyia, he wrote, is no aimless or destructive fall into the abyss but a meaningful katabasis, and its object is the restoration of the whole man.

Set Jung's sentence beside 官資降黜, rank reduced. One reads the demotion. The other asks what the demotion is for.

This is the reading I offer when someone lands on one of the three days with a plan in hand. The count is not telling you that the plan is bad. It is telling you that for three days out of fifteen the cycle is not adding, and the work available is the other kind. Twelve days forward, three days returning, and the ratio holds for as long as the cycle runs.

How I use it with a real chart

The man with the shop did not move his launch. We kept the date and moved the fifteen days in front of it. Contracts went out on advancing days. The conversations with the landlord and the bank, the ones where he needed to hear what was actually being said, went on the three. He signed the lease nine days later with a rent abatement he had not thought to ask for in the first round.

What that story shows is narrower than it first looks. A man who was about to spend two weeks chasing a date spent them asking better questions instead, and the questions were better because something outside his own anxiety told him to slow down. I have no way to check whether the count reached into a landlord's office, and I would not trust a reader who told me they had checked.

Each day gets a bias. The bias shapes where you put your attention. It never decides the outcome for you.

An exercise for a retreat window

Pick the next fifteen days and note which three are the turning days, using the four seats as your anchor. Find your own day pillar with the BaZi calculator first, since the count runs off it. Then change nothing else. Keep a line a day on what moved and what did not, and at the end of the window read the three entries together.

People who try it find one of two things. Either the three days really did hold the stalls, or the stalls were everywhere and the count gave them a place to put the annoyance. Both results are useful. The second is more common, and it teaches something about how much of a hard fortnight is the calendar and how much is the person holding it.

A closing note

The manuals of this tradition have agreed for centuries that forward motion is not continuous. They disagreed about why, and about what to call the days that break it. One of them printed three answers in a single chapter and left the argument running. Count fifteen days forward from the last advancing seat and you will know which of the four kinds of day you are standing on.

This article is offered for spiritual guidance and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for medical, legal, or financial advice.