Tian Sha, Di Sha, Sui Sha and Xing Sha in BaZi: Four Stars That Appoint You

In February a woman sent me a screenshot from a reading she had paid for. Four Chinese terms were circled in red, and the note beside them said this combination was very bad. She wanted to know which of the four to worry about first.

I opened the chapter. The four names sit together in one paragraph at the tail of a longer entry, and the paragraph says something close to the opposite of the note.

Tian Sha, Di Sha, Sui Sha and Xing Sha are four BaZi markers defined by their distance from the robber star: each one sits a fixed number of branches forward of the seat that carries 劫煞, and each lands in a fixed group of branches.

Their source is 三命通會, the Ming compendium first printed in 1578, inside the chapter on the robber star and the spirit of loss.

Four names off one seat

The four names measure one place, and the chapter builds them in order.

The base is 劫煞, 劫 meaning to take, 奪也, and the taking is described as coming from outside, 自外奪之. The seat follows the three-harmony group of whatever branch you are reading, and each group takes the branch where its element dies. For 申子辰 the water dies at 巳, for 寅午戌 fire dies at 亥. For 巳酉丑 metal dies at 寅, and for 亥卯未 wood dies at 申. Four groups, four seats, and all four seats sit inside 寅申巳亥, the four corners the Chinese year turns on.

That much is arithmetic. It is where the reading starts. The general star and the peach blossom are counted from the same triad, which is why the four sha in this paragraph keep turning up next to names you have seen elsewhere.

The offsets, checked by hand

The chapter counts forward from the robber seat and gives each count a name.

天煞在刼煞前二辰 puts Tian Sha two branches ahead of the seat, 地煞在刼煞前五辰 puts Di Sha five ahead, 歲煞在刼煞前前三辰 puts Sui Sha three ahead, and 刑煞在刼煞前七辰 puts Xing Sha seven ahead.

It then names the landing place for three of the four. Di Sha lands in 辰戌丑未, the earth branches, 是辰戌丑未也. Sui Sha lands in 寅申巳亥, 亦是寅申巳亥也, while Xing Sha lands in 子午卯酉, 是子午卯酉也, with the phrase 與將星同位, on the same seat as the general star.

The fourth landing place is not stated. Run it and it arrives. Two forward from 巳 is 未, from 亥 is 丑, from 寅 is 辰, from 申 is 戌. Tian Sha lands in earth branches as well, three branches away from Di Sha in every group. The chapter leaves the reader to notice, and a beginner reading the paragraph alone would think Tian Sha belongs to a different set.

Seven is the interesting count, because the chapter explains where it lands. The general star sits on the middle branch of a triad, and the middle branch is exactly seven forward of the death seat in all four groups. So the overlap is structural, and it repeats. Metal and earth get their office measured seven branches from where their element dies.

Read the four together and a neighbourhood appears around the seat of loss, with three of them standing in branch groups the robber itself does not occupy.

The line that says the opposite

The result is the line that made me keep reading this chapter. 以上四煞俱主有權，不尅身不為灾. All four of the above master authority, 主有權, and none of them attacks the self or counts as disaster.

Nothing in the surrounding entries of this manual has prepared the reader for that. The other shen sha are defined by what they take, and this paragraph defines four of them by what they confer.

The condition follows in the same breath. 尅身則為灾重, if they attack the self then the trouble is heavy, and that clause carries the whole hinge. The four positions do not carry a fixed verdict. What decides is the direction of the relation between the marker and the day master, the same test the manual applies to the robber and to the spirit of loss, where the reading breaks on 身尅煞 against 煞尅身.

A strong day master meets these four and finds a post to occupy. A weak one meets the same four branches and gets hit by them, with the branches staying identical in both cases.

Which office the chart carries

The chapter splits the appointment by element. 與亡刼同帶金土為武臣，水木為文臣. Sitting with the robber or the spirit of loss, a chart carrying metal and earth produces 武臣, an officer of war, and one carrying water and wood produces 文臣, an officer of letters.

One wrinkle follows. 文臣帶土金為煞者亦主兵權. A civil chart that carries earth and metal in the sha also holds military authority. Read plainly, the office belongs to the elements around the marker, and a chart can end up holding both commissions.

I should flag an ambiguity, because 帶 can be taken as what the chart carries or as what the sha brings with it. The chapter does not settle it. The distinction matters if you are sorting a reading from a lookup table. My own reading is the first one, since the same chapter uses 帶 elsewhere to describe what a pillar carries alongside a star.

An office you can hold, or one that holds you

Here is where the Ming paragraph and Jung start telling the same story from opposite ends.

The markers sit at fixed distances, and the office belongs to what the chart around the marker can carry. Jung treated archetypal content as a form that takes its character from the life carrying it, which is why one person meets a figure as a calling and another meets the same figure as a symptom (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959). The process he called individuation is the long work of giving that material somewhere to sit inside a life.

Which is a serviceable way to read 不尅身 and 尅身. An office you hold organises your week. An office that holds you organises it for you, and the person inside it describes their life in the passive voice. I have sat with both. The second type usually arrives sure of their profession and unsure of their reasons.

The twelve branches look identical in both cases. What separates them is the strength of the day master against the branch, a judgement you make with the whole chart in front of you.

What I ask in a session

I work the arithmetic openly, because the four names sound like a verdict and the numbers do not.

One: find the group, then the seat, then the four positions. Two: check whether any of the four sit in your own pillars, and in which pillar, since a year position and an hour position are not the same claim. Three: look at the day master's strength against that branch before saying anything about disaster. Four: read the element the chart carries before you name an office.

Two questions do most of the work. Which of these four descriptions matches a job you already do without being paid for, and what would you have to stop doing to be paid for it? The second one tends to produce the longer silence.

The exercise is a page of writing. Name the one role you perform in your family or your team that nobody assigned to you, and then write what it costs you per week in hours. Most people find the role is older than the job.

The reading she actually needed

The woman with the screenshot had two of the four in her pillars, and her day master was strong against the branch. What the paid reading had called very bad, the chapter called 有權. She had been running a department for six years without the title, which she mentioned in passing near the end of the call.

She asked whether the star would give her the title. I said the star describes a position, and that her chart already had her standing in it.

The BaZi calculator will show you the four pillars and the three-harmony group. From there the four counts are two, five, three and seven, and the chapter is short enough to read in one sitting.

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