Heavenly Kitchen: the Eating God's Emolument

Count to the third stem, then find its Emolument

The Heavenly Kitchen (天厨贵人) hangs on the Eating God: count from the day stem to its Eating God (食神), then look up the Emolument (禄) branch of that Eating God. The branch it lands on is the Kitchen.

Open the full-size diagram

Sketch table: the Eating God and the Kitchen come from the site engine's look-up (the Eating God is the third stem counted forward and the Kitchen is its Emolument branch); the Literary Star column comes from that star's own table and is set beside it.

The first column is the Eating God, the second is that stem's Emolument, which is the Kitchen, and the third sets the Literary Star of the same day stem beside it; the two lightly shaded cells, for Yang Fire and Yin Fire, are where the two tables part. The "third place" rule comes from juan 5 of the Sanming Tonghui (三命通会), a Ming-dynasty compendium, which opens its Eating God section by fixing the Eating God as the stem that the day stem gives birth to, third in the count, and gives Yang Wood eating Yang Fire and Yin Wood eating Yin Fire as its examples.

Start counting at Yang Wood: Yang Wood, Yin Wood, Yang Fire. Yang Fire comes third, so Yang Wood eats Yang Fire. Start at Yin Water: Yin Water, Yang Wood, Yin Wood. Yin Wood comes third. Run all ten stems this way, then set each Eating God against the Emolument spot it holds in the twelve life stages, and the second column of the picture is complete.

Three sayings, three placements

Where the name "Kitchen" sits is not the same in the books and on the site. For a Yang Wood day, the Yuanhai Ziping (渊海子平), a manual of the Ziping method, lists the stems met in the chart and writes:

Meeting Yang Fire: it is the Eating God, the Kitchen, the Star of Longevity.

Here the Kitchen is one of several names for the Eating God stem itself. A Yang Wood day looks at the stem Yang Fire, and no branch or Emolument is mentioned. Juan 5 of the Sanming Tonghui opens a separate entry under the Eating God and puts the name on "an Eating God that meets its Emolument":

Yang Wood eats Yang Fire, and Yang Fire's Emolument is on Snake. Where the Eating God's own place meets its Emolument, it is called the Kitchen. The Emolument must show in both stem and branch to count: with the Yang Fire but no Snake, or the Snake but no Yang Fire, it does not. It does not matter whether this is the year, month or hour, and it is not limited to Yang Earth days, which is how it differs from the combining Emolument.

The entry has three layers. The Eating God stem (Yang Fire) and its Emolument branch (Snake) must both be seen. Any of the year, month or hour pillar will do. And it is not tied to a single day master. The "combining Emolument" it mentions is a later entry in the same juan, on a Yang Earth day with a Yang Metal and Monkey hour: Yang Earth eats Yang Metal, which has its Emolument on Monkey, so this too is an Eating God seated on its Emolument, but only for a Yang Earth day meeting that one hour pillar.

One Snake, two year stems

The two sample charts below share the day pillar, the hour pillar and the month branch; they differ in the year stem, and the month stem follows the year stem by the standard rule. The day master is Yang Wood in both, the month is Snake, and the Kitchen of Yang Wood is on Snake.

In chart one both conditions are met, the site marks the Kitchen on the month pillar, and the book's wording holds as well. In chart two the stems are Yang Metal, Yin Metal, Yang Wood and Yang Water, so there is no Yang Fire; the site still marks the Snake on the month pillar, while by the book's "the Snake but no Yang Fire does not count" it does not. A Snake always hides Yang Fire, Yang Earth and Yang Metal inside it, yet the book still wrote "the Snake but no Yang Fire", which suggests that "seen" means showing as a stem, not as a hidden stem.

The day pillar is also searched. Wu Shen (戊申), Ji You (己酉), Ren Yin (壬寅) and Gui Mao (癸卯) are four day pillars that stand on their own Kitchen. Take a Wu Shen day: Yang Earth counts on to Yang Metal, and Yang Metal draws its Emolument on Monkey, so the Monkey of the day pillar hits itself. For the other six stems (Yang Wood, Yin Wood, Yang Fire, Yin Fire, Yang Metal and Yin Metal) the Kitchen branch has the opposite polarity to the stem, so no such day pillar exists.

The book's cautions: the Owl and the clash

The section on the Eating God in juan 5 collects several old verses, and two of them name the Kitchen:

An Eating God meeting its Emolument is called the Kitchen; no clash, no restraint, no void, no officer or killing star.

An Eating God on the month is called the Kitchen, and whoever meets it is rich with surplus. Beware above all the Owl, which cuts blessings in the open; most of all dread the clash, which wears them away unseen.

The "Owl" (枭) is the Indirect Resource, and the book has a separate section for it under its other name, Toppled Food (倒食). For a Yang Wood day the Eating God is Yang Fire, and Yang Water is the Indirect Resource of Yang Wood. When Yang Water is strong it puts Yang Fire out, so the Eating God is robbed. Juan 10 has an even shorter line on the same thing: "the Kitchen meeting the Owl, food and salary wax and wane". The clash is a relation between branches:

The site's line and the book's "food"

The site describes the Kitchen as a place for food, clothing and the pleasures of the table, and also as a channel of output in expression and craft. The first half matches the book. When the Sanming Tonghui rates this pattern in its section on the Eating God, it says:

For this pattern the day master and the Eating God must both be strong, with no clash or break; the person has thick wealth and plentiful food, and a generous measure of fortune.

"Plentiful food" is the side the site calls the pleasures of the table. The second half, a channel of output in expression and craft, comes from the later habit of reading the Eating God as what the day master gives birth to and sends outward; see the Eating God and the day master. The passage above does not mention it.