Kong Wang in BaZi: The Two Empty Branches and What a Hole Does to Your Element

A man brought me a chart last winter with one question attached. His day pillar sat on a branch his decade could not hold, and a teacher had told him it meant an empty life. He wanted to know whether the emptiness could be filled.

I have heard that fear in maybe forty charts since. Somebody is handed a technical term and quietly turns it into a verdict on their whole life. The chapter that owns the term opens by refusing that move in five characters: 未可便為㐫論. Do not call it bad yet.

Kong wang is a BaZi marker that names the two Earthly Branches a ten-day decade cannot occupy, so every birth chart carries a permanent gap in its structure. 三命通會, first printed in 1578, splits the name in half. 有是位而無祿曰空, a seat that exists with no salary resting on it. 有支而無干曰亡, a branch standing with no stem above it.

The gap in the wheel

Ten stems, twelve branches, and a sexagenary cycle built from the mismatch. A decade runs from 甲 to 癸 in ten steps, and 洞𤣥經 gives the arithmetic in four characters: 遁窮而亡生, the counting runs out and the emptiness is born. The plain version follows: 如甲子旬遁至酉而十干足，所以無戌亥. The 甲子 decade walks to 酉 and has spent every stem, so 戌 and 亥 stay behind with nothing above them.

That is the whole mechanic, and it belongs to the calendar rather than to your chart: any system pairing ten with twelve produces holes, and everyone born carries two.

The chapter's next line is the one that matters for reading: 然空而有實，亡而有存. Emptiness has something solid in it.

Which hole is yours

珞琭子 then makes the gap harder to hold, splitting each pair by polarity. 五陽令用一陽，五陰令用一陰, a yang pillar takes the yang branch of the pair and a yin pillar takes the yin, so 甲子, 丙寅, 戊辰, 庚午 and 壬申 take 戌 and leave 亥 alone, while 乙丑, 丁卯, 己巳, 辛未 and 癸酉 take 亥 and leave 戌.

Then a second rule cuts the same decade along the other axis. 甲子至戊辰以戌為空亡，己巳至癸酉以亥為空亡, the first five pillars void one branch and the last five the other. Two rules, one decade, and they disagree on 乙丑, which is yin by stem and early by position. My reading is that polarity decides which hole a pillar owns and position decides how loudly it speaks.

Position grades the loudness on terms the text never explains. 壬戌 is heavy and 戊戌 light in the first half, 癸亥 heavy and 乙亥 light in the second, and both light cases double their element, which may be why they fill part of their own hole.

What a hole does to an element

Here is the sentence I quote most often, and it is not a warning. 金空則響，火空則明，水空則清，木空則折，土空則崩. Metal in a hole rings, fire in a hole gives light, water in a hole runs clear, wood in a hole snaps, and earth in a hole gives way.

Three elements gain something from the hole that ruins the other two. Nothing is subtracted. What changes is what the element can do, in both directions.

A bell is a metal object with a hole in it. Cast the same bronze solid and you have a lump that hits the floor. A client with a metal day master and his void on the 巳 seat spent nine years in a job he was overqualified for, then started recording lectures on the side. That side work is now his income. He had been trying to fill the hole.

Turn the list on wood and the same hole reads differently. A wood day master with the void in the growth seat builds the frame and then loses the nerve to stand inside it. The text says 折, snap. Nothing rots. It breaks at the joint.

Two holes facing each other

The chapter then adds the configuration it fears most, and the fear is technical. 互換空亡, mutual void, happens when two pillars land on each other's empty branches. Its case is a 甲子 year with a 壬戌 day. The 甲子 decade voids 戌 and 亥, exactly the day pillar, and the 壬戌 day belongs to the 甲寅 decade, which voids 子 and 丑, exactly the year.

The gloss is the sharpest line in the section. 以實為空則實可映空，以空為空無所映實. Make something solid empty and the solid still mirrors the emptiness. Make emptiness empty and there is nothing to reflect at all. The verdict is 主一生財物耗散，大破家宅, assets draining away and a household broken open.

The cut road

One form of the void is practical, and it is the version most people have met. 截路空亡, the cut road, is read from the day stem to the hour, 只以日取時. 甲己見申酉, 乙庚見午未, 丙辛見辰巳, 丁壬見寅卯, 戊癸見戌亥.

The rule is derived rather than memorised. Hour stems on a 甲 or 己 day come from the 五鼠遁 sequence, and the two hours landing on 壬申 and 癸酉 are the cut road, because 壬 and 癸 are water and water across a road stops the traveller. Run it for the other four pairs and each produces two 壬 or 癸 hours.

The warning is unusually concrete for a Ming text. 此空亡非但命見不吉，凡出入求財交易上官嫁娶百事皆忌, which covers travel, trade, office and marriage. I read it as a road with water across it. If a decision falls on those two hours, moving it costs nothing.

Four decades short of an element

A second void has nothing to do with a single pillar: 四大空亡 names four decades whose branches never cover one element at all, 甲子甲午旬獨無水 because the 子 and 午 decades carry no water, 甲寅甲申旬獨無金 because the 寅 and 申 decades carry no metal. Meet the missing element anywhere in one of those charts and it counts as 正犯, a direct hit, because 五行不全, the five phases are incomplete.

The example is poignant for a manual. 壺中子云「顏回夭折，只因四大空亡」. Yan Hui, Confucius's favourite student, died at forty and the text blames this configuration. He lived from 521 to 481 BCE, and the tradition remembers him as the poor and happiest of the group. That a Ming compiler reached for him tells you how seriously the deficit reading was taken.

The one time a hole moves

Static voids describe a chart. The chapter also lets a void be activated, and the trigger is a clash in the luck cycle. 若運衝刑反為虛煞. A clash turns the void into a false malefic, which sounds worse than it reads. Both printed cases end well. 甲申 丁丑 乙亥 甲申, running 壬午 luck, produced 當路. 乙未 乙酉 乙丑 丁亥, running 辛巳, produced 監司大振聲望, a censor with a large reputation.

The other half of that section is about combination, and there the chapter stops describing and starts prescribing. 有空亡却喜見合，合則不能空矣, a void that meets a combination stops being empty, though whether that helps depends on its company: when malefics pile into one palace, 全要空亡解之, emptiness dissolves them, and when salary, horse and noble stars gather, 全怕空亡散之, emptiness scatters them.

What Jung saw in a hole

Jung wrote about this in a text he printed privately in 1916 under the name Basilides. In the first sermon he describes a state he calls the pleroma. "In the pleroma there is nothing and everything." Then the question the passage exists to raise: "wherefore, then, do we speak of the pleroma at all, since it is thus everything and nothing?" (Seven Sermons to the Dead)

His answer is where the Ming chapter and the psychology meet. Jung says the creature survives by making distinctions, and that losing them is fatal. "We fall into indistinctiveness, which is the other quality of the pleroma. We fall into the pleroma itself and cease to be creatures." He calls the counter-movement the principium individuationis: "Therefore we die in such measure as we do not distinguish." (Pleroma)

Set that beside 以空為空無所映實 and the two texts describe one condition. A hole with edges is a bell. A hole with no edges is dissolution, and Jung thought dissolution was the only real danger in the psyche. His remedy fills nothing. It keeps a distinction standing beside the hole.

The exercise

Find your day branch, then find its decade. Write down the two branches that decade leaves empty and mark where your void falls. Most people find it in one palace and not the others, which already tells you where the hole sits in your life.

Two questions follow, and the second is the work. What did this hole make louder, and where did I spend years pouring something into it?

The shadow question I ask slowly, out loud: what have I been calling bad luck that was really a shape I had not learned to use.

The chapter ends by reversing everything above it. 月日時三位俱空亡者，不害為大貴人, three voids across month, day and hour and the person is still fit for high office. Then the reason, which is the best sentence in it: 響之有聲莫非虛中也，是以大人之命要有虛中之德. A sound needs a hollow to come out of. It closes with 若無衝無合無刑謂眞空亡. The man who brought me that chart left with a smaller question than he asked: his gap had a combination two pillars along, and what he called an empty life was a bell with something to strike.

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