My policies on answering questions on this forum are quite clear. I answer technical questions but I do not answer personal questions relating to a person’s chart (for obvious reasons, this creates more problems than solutions almost always and see my entry on why free bazi advice is a bad idea). However, I am frequently in receipt of technical questions for which there is no other way to describe it than – BADLY PHRASED.
So if the recipients wonder why there has been no answer – well, because it’s very difficult to answer a badly phrased answer succinctly and clearly.
Here is an example of what I consider a ‘badly phrased’ technical question that I received recently.
If output god is unfavorable and regulating useful god are wealth, power, and resource… And output god being unfavorable and “not wanting any more of it in life”… How then could I make the wealth god useful, since it’s 1 of the favorable gods, if I exclude the output element, how will my wealth element be supported? Especially when there’s friends there to make wealth element more weak..how does that work? This is also in the case where person I’m referring to us born in the season of output(eating god)?
Firstly, there no real question in this question. It is stream of consciousness blathering. What if blah leads to blah but the blah is involved and so how does blah become blah without cause blah to become blah?
Secondly, there are too many false assumptions in this question. The asker is assuming that they have interpreted the chart correctly to assume that Output is unfavourable. The asker is also confusing two concepts: unfavourable + favourable elements and regulating useful gods. These are two different levels and methods of analysis and they are being thrown together in the same pot.
The asker assumes that the wealth god has to be made “useful” since it is one of the favourable gods (again, it is not clear WHICH one is the Useful Wealth Star – Direct or Indirect Wealth – since no other data was supplied). The asker also doesn’t seem to understand the difference being “using” and “useful”. (it’s a nitpick I know but still – precision in BaZi is important).
Then there is the exclusion of the output element but then wanting go support the wealth element aspect of the question – again this is a question that is meaningless in its attempt to derive a technical understanding and fails to adhere to the key basics. Since the asker knows that output supports wealth, by extension, output cannot be ‘excluded’. So what is the real question here that they are trying to work out?
Where it gets entirely contradictory is the next part – there are friends to make the wealth element more weak. Wait a minute – if the chart has lots of friends, then it is a strong day master to which how then did the person arrive at the conclusion that Output was Unfavourable? (this is a complete turning on the head of the basic approach to interpreting a chart – Strong/Weak). The poser of ‘how does that work’ seems thrown in to the end of the question without consideration for exactly what is being asked. How does WHAT work? The whole last 3 sentences made no sense. How can the technical question be accordingly answered?
And then finally there is the point that the person is born in the season of the Output Star (specifically Eating God). Again, since I don’t know the Day Master, i don’t know what the Earthly Branch in reference is and finally, I haven’t seen the whole bloody chart – how on earth can such a question be answered aside from the fact that I don’t even know if the person has interpreted the season correctly? (given the previous numerous technical interpretation errors?)
This is not an out of the ordinary question. This is the TYPICAL nature of many technical questions that BaZi consultants get. This medusa’s head of bits and tangles of “stuff” and somehow we are expected to come up with answer that is satisfactory. I should demand a satisfactory question first surely?
The person asking the question here is trying to throw 20 things into the pot and arrive at one golden answer. It doesn’t work that way. The key to asking a good technical question is to break it down in to small bite sized segments but most importantly, to UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. This person clearly has picked up bits and pieces of information from all over the place and is trying to figure it out for themselves – since the basic information is incongruous and inconsistent, the more this person adds to the pot of incomplete information, the more they get confused.
Start with the basics first and get that right. Apply the Fav/Unfavourable Elements well. Leave out the regulating Useful God first. Work with the Day Master and Strength of the Day Master primarily and figure out what is the question that is at the heart of the technical inquiry – are you asking this question to better understand what line of work the person should be in? How they should make their money? What are the challenges they face in their personal relationships? The technical is there in order to facilitate an understanding of the personal – without the personal question at the heart of it all, how can the technical question ever yield any insight?
Clarity of thought and precision of communication is essential in BaZi because one is juggling many different ideas at different levels.Needless to say, the above question will go unanswered because it is not possible to answer it.