Useful God
In most of the LuMing methods, it seems to be the most important to find out Useful God. But many of the ideas you see are wrong. We will not quote any introduction about “Useful God” on the Internet.
Useful God, Select from the sky trunk and the earth branch. But the premise is that you must correctly analyze the overall structure of the LuMing chart. It is generally believed that once the Useful God appears, the fortune will be better. Related to this are: career, love, health, life, wealth and so on.
The specific methods will be introduced in the future. Below are descriptions of some ancient books.
Link From: http://treybazi.blogspot.com/2013/02/bazi-useful-god.html
The concept of YongShen can be easily understood if we refer to ZPZQ which states:
八字用神,专求月令,以日干配月令地支,而生克不同,格局分焉。财官印食,此用神之善而顺用之者也;煞伤劫刃,用神之不善而逆用之者也。当顺而顺,当逆而逆,配合得宜,皆为贵格。
The useful God of Bazi, seek only from the month’s decree, with the Stem of the Day matching with the Month Decree Branch, engendering and countering are different, structures are distinguished. Wealth, Officer, Seal and Food, these are benevolent useful gods, thus should be used in a ‘follow’ / favorable manner; Devil, Hurting, Robbing and Blade, these are not benevolent gods, used in a reversed / ‘against’ manner. When it should be in a follow manner and it is in that manner, and when it should be in a reversed manner and it is in a reversed manner, the matching and combination are beneficial, all are noble structures.
顺 Shun – I translate this word as follow, like rowing a boat along the stream.
逆 Ni – I translate as against, like rowing a boat against the stream.
This paragraph is pretty straight forward. From the first sentence we know that the Useful God is derived only from the Month’s branch and useful god is related to the chart structure.
Benevolent Gods – Wealth, Officer, Seal and Food.
Not benevolent Gods – Devil, Hurting, Robbing and Blade.
The benevolent Gods should be used in the ‘follow’ way while the not-benevolent Gods should be used in the ‘against’ way.
The third sentence says when the useful gods in the chart are correctly used, they result in noble structures including the not-benevolent gods.
So now it comes to the question:
What is the ‘follow’ way and what is the ‘against’ way?
The ‘follow’ way is explained as:
是以善而顺用之,
则财喜食神以相生,生官以护财;
官喜透财以相生,生印以护官;
印喜官煞以相生,劫财以护印;
食喜身旺以相生,生财以护食。
When it is benevolent and used in a ‘follow’ way, is like
Wealth likes being engendered by Food God, and Wealth engenders Officer to protect wealth; Officer likes protruding Wealth to engender (Officer) and Officer engenders Seal to protect Officer;
Seal likes being engendered by Officer and Devil to engender Seal and Rob wealth to protect Seal;
Food likes prosperous self to engender Food, and engendering Wealth to protect Food.
The ‘against’ way is explained below:
不善而逆用之,
则七煞喜食神以制伏,忌财印以资扶;
伤官喜佩印以制伏,生财以化伤;
阳刃喜官煞以制伏,忌官煞之俱无;
月劫喜透官以制伏,利用财而透食以化劫。
Not-benevolent and used in an ‘against’ way is like
7th Devil likes to be controlled by Food, dreads supports and help from Wealth and Seal; Hurting Officer likes to be controlled by Seal, engendering wealth and transforming itself,
Yang Ren likes to be controlled by Officer and Devil, dreads the total absence of Officer and Devil,
Robbing Month likes to be controlled by penetrating Officer, using Wealth and penetrating Food to transform Rob.
此顺逆之大路也。
These are the major ways of the concepts of ‘follow’ and ‘against’.
So ZPZQ says the Useful God must be considered from the month’s branch, what say other books?
SMTH does not have a particular chapter that discusses Useful God, but in one of its chapters, it is mentioned that Useful God is mostly taken from the month’s branch 况用神多取诸月 in Volume 2 – Discussing Year, Month, Day and Hour 论年月日时
SFTK also mentions that Useful God comes from the Month’s Decree, there’s a poem that teaches how to derive the Useful God from the month Stem in sFTK
As for DTS, the concept of ‘Usefulness’ is much more complicated.
DTS Chapter 13 writes:
道有体用,不可以一端论也,要在扶之抑之得其宜。
Tao has forms and uses, cannot be discussed from one direction, from support and repress that benefits would be obtained.
体 – Body, form, structure.
用 – Use, capability, ability.
有以日主为体,提纲为用。
There’s form and use that establish (separately) on their own, both of them are prosperous, equally, and when in the luck cycle they are also equal, they would be separately establish own their own.
There’s form and use that are entirely sluggish, like fire and wood are equally prosperous, does not mee with metal and earth so they are entirely sluggish, this cannot be determined from one aspect of the matter.
Use in the concept of ‘form’ and ‘use’ is different from the concept of ‘use’ in useful god, it is now allowable to take the ‘use’ from the concept of ‘form’ and ‘use’ as Yong Shen, and if to ignore this and to look for alternative useful god is also not allowable, as long as the true ‘form’ and ‘use’ is thoroughly thought, and from that the important useful god is determined, and 2, 3, 4, 5 places with useful gods, is not good chart, has to modulate its heaviness and lightness, do not use the excessive or insufficient.
The explanation, unfortunately is also very profound (to me), anyway, from bits and pieces that I could understand, it seems like the first two sentences from this excerpt agree to the concept of ‘Useful God’ in ZPZQ.
This sentence is essentially the traditional ZiPing method. The objects in the month’s branch can be taken as the Useful God, depending on which HS protruding and has the most influence in the chart.
This describes the concept of 相神 Ministerial God that is taught by ZPZQ. Let’s leave this for future discussion.
Other application of ‘form’ and ‘use’ concept from DTS have their own uses, and helps to determine the ‘Useful God’ for miscellaneous structures 杂格.