Guan Fu in BaZi: The Summons Star and the Five Offices of the Year

A man brought me a chart in September and wanted to know which month the paperwork would clear. He had a hearing in front of him, a licence renewal behind it, and a habit of reading every name in his chart as a date. I told him the manual that names his star gives no months, only a seat, and the seat comes with a job title.

Guan fu is a BaZi marker computed five branches forward from the year branch, and it belongs to a set of five administrative markers that the Ming manual Sanming Tonghui reads off the same ring: the summons, the illness, the death tally, the mourning pair, and the house with its tomb. The distinguishing feature is that none of the five describes an event. Each names a position, and the year decides which position is in play.

The credential the year hands out

The character 符 is a tally. Two halves of a token were split between the throne and the officer who carried the order, and the order held when the halves met. 官符 is the official's half. A person born under it holds a credential they did not apply for, and the credential puts them in front of a desk.

That reading is mine. What the chapter gives is blunter. 取太歲前五辰是, take the fifth branch forward from the year branch, 日時遇之平生多官災, and a chart with it on the day or hour pillar collects official trouble for life. 更併羊刃乃刑徒之命, add the blade star and the sentence runs to penal labour.

Several posts into this chapter I noticed the names are not mythic. No dragon, no tiger with a sword. A summons, an illness note, a death record, a funeral, a house and a grave. It reads like the furniture of a county office.

Five seats on one ring

The four entries that follow the summons are short enough to print.

病符煞 取太歲後一辰是, the illness marker takes the branch one behind the year, 犯者多疾病, and it adds 行年遇之亦然, the same holds when the marker arrives by year.

死符煞 取病符對衝是, the death tally takes the branch opposite the illness marker, 月時日犯之無貴神解救㓙惡短折, and a chart carrying it on month, hour or day without a noble star runs to a short life.

喪吊煞 一名横關煞, one name for a barred gate. 取命前二辰為喪門, two branches forward of the birth branch is the mourning gate, 命後二辰為弔客, two behind is the condolence guest. The pair also go by 地雌 and 天狗.

宅墓煞 命前五辰為宅, five forward of the birth branch is the house, 命後五辰為墓, five behind is the tomb. 怕宅墓受歲刼等煞來破本命之宅主呻吟, when the year star or the robber star breaks either one, the chart groans.

The one rung that does not fit

The illness marker sits one branch behind the year. The death tally is the branch opposite the illness marker, and opposition is six steps. Six forward from one behind the year lands five forward, which is where the summons rule puts its own marker. So 官符 and 死符 compute to one seat, every year, for every chart. Take a 寅 year. The illness marker is 丑, its opposite is 未, and the fifth branch forward from 寅 is 未.

The chapter also carries a song that numbers the palaces: 五官六死十二病三喪十一弔來臨, the summons in the fifth palace, death in the sixth, illness in the twelfth, mourning in the third, condolence in the eleventh. Illness at the twelfth, one behind the year, fixes the grid. Place one is the year itself and each place steps one branch forward. For the 寅 year that puts the summons at 午 and the death tally at 未.

Three of the four entries agree with that grid. Mourning in the third place is two forward and condolence in the eleventh is two behind, which is what both rules say. Illness in the twelfth is one behind, matching. The death tally at five forward matches its derivation. Only the summons sits on two branches at once, five forward in its own line and four forward in the song.

Two readings follow, and the chapter does not choose between them. One takes the offset line and puts the summons in the same seat as the death tally. The other takes the song, where the summons counts the year itself as the first of its five steps, which I lean toward since three entries line up behind it and the offset line stands alone.

The same phrase is counted the other way elsewhere in these volumes. In the entry on the claw and fang, 命前三辰 means three branches forward, and the worked example runs 甲子 to 卯, three steps. So 前 counts exclusive there, and this is the one entry where that convention collides. The compiler's own fire entry parts from its rule in the same way.

What each office says

The verdicts show what the names are for.

The summons starts at 多官災 and hardens to penal labour with 羊刃 beside it. The illness marker repeats 多疾病 and extends itself to the arrival year. The death tally asks for a noble star, and absence of one turns it harsh. The mourning pair is the widest of the five, since 太歲㐫煞併臨大小運限必主禍, an angry year star meeting either one inside a luck cycle brings trouble, and the verse adds 縱有吉星重疉至，不遭刑戮也傾危, even with good stars stacked on it, a person escapes the sentence and still tilts.

The house and tomb entry is the quietest of the five. Nothing dramatic happens in it. An arriving year star breaks the house and the person groans.

The seat that talks

One line in the summons entry opens a second door. 若官符落天中多邪誕不實名妄語煞. If the summons falls on 天中, much that is false and invented, and the name for it is the star of reckless speech. 天中 is another name for 空亡, the empty branch, which this volume heads 一名天中煞 and treats in its own earlier entry.

Read the two entries side by side and the same pair produces two kinds of talking. The summons says false reports accumulate around the person. The void says 與官符併則佞媚多文, with the summons beside it the chart turns fluent and ingratiating. One describes an accusation arriving from outside, the other a fluency arriving from inside. The seat is empty, so the authority has no floor under it, and what remains is talk.

The void entry spreads the judgement wider. 其神性無常, its nature is without constancy, and every star it sits with changes character. The hanging marker later lists 天中官符大耗 among the combinations that make a bad chart certain.

The house and the tomb

Five forward of the birth branch is the house. Five behind is the tomb. Since the death tally also lands five forward, the house and the death tally share a branch, which is the kind of sentence a clerk would write and a client would flinch at.

Carl Jung built his house the other way round. He bought the land at Bollingen in 1922, the year his mother died, and put up a round stone tower in 1923. He added to it in 1927, in 1931 and in 1935. After his wife died in 1955 he raised a second storey on the 1927 wing, and the record of the building notes that the addition signified an extension of consciousness achieved in old age.

What I see is a man doing with stone what the marker names as a position. The house moved when a death arrived, and anyone who has cleared a parent's house knows the two seats sit close.

What I do with it

When a chart comes to me, I compute the five seats off the birth branch and set them down as five departments. For a 寅 birth year the illness marker sits at 丑, the death tally and the house at 未, the tomb at 酉, the mourning gate at 辰 and the condolence guest at 子.

Then I ask which seat holds a memory. A person who can date a tax problem, a hospital year, a funeral or a house move to one of those branches is telling me where their attention lives, and that is worth having.

A writing exercise, if you want to take it further. Work out the five seats for your own birth branch, then beside each one write the year you remember something official, something ill, something lost, or something housed happening. Leave the blank seats blank. They tend to be the ones people have been treating as a threat.

I have read charts for fifteen years, and this is the part of the old manuals I trust. The ledgers are careless in places, and their arithmetic can be checked by anyone with the branch ring in front of them.

Wan Minying wrote that the markers survive because practitioners tested them. Reading his numbers against each other is one way to run that test.