Establishment: the cell of taking office

Establishment: the day the post begins and the first pay arrives

Imagine an official arriving at his posting: from today he has a position, and a salary with it. The fourth cell of the twelve life stages takes that meaning and is called Establishment (临官), literally "arriving at office"; when people speak of a stem, the same position is called its emolument (禄).

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Position sketch: the positions come from the site engine's twelve-stage table; the two arcs take one Yang and one Yin stem to show that the cell after Establishment lies in opposite directions.

Entry seven of the Sanming Tiyao (三命提要), which juan 2 of the Sanming Tonghui (三命通会) preserves, is Establishment itself:

Establishment: things are already flowering and bearing fruit, like a person who has taken office.

Things have flowered and set fruit, like a person stepping into an official post. Compared with the "cap and robe" of Coming of Age, this cell goes from dress to position, and the next one is Peak (帝旺).

The emolument of each stem, as the book lists it

The section on the ten stems in juan 2 goes through them one at a time, each with a phrase of the form "its emolument arrives at such-and-such branch". Set beside the site engine's table, the two agree:

The entry for Yang Earth says "its emolument is at Snake". In the passage on Earth's Growth the book gives the reason: Yang Earth follows Yang Fire and takes office at Snake, while Yin Earth follows Yin Fire and has its emolument at Horse. That agrees with the site engine's treatment of Fire and Earth as sharing a palace.

Inside its own post: the Day Master is already there

The table has a tidy regularity that can be checked against the engine: in every Day Master's Establishment branch, the hidden stems include the Day Master itself.

Run down the table and every row checks out: Tiger carries Yang Wood among its hidden stems (with Yang Fire and Yang Earth), Rabbit carries Yin Wood, Snake and Horse carry the Fire and Earth pairs, Monkey and Rooster carry the two Metals, and Pig and Rat carry the two Waters. That may be part of why the name is "emolument": the post is where the Day Master has its roots. (This is a regularity of the site table; the book does not say it.) The reverse also holds: no Day Master is hidden inside its own Peak branch.

Yang and Yin of one element: Establishment and Peak trade places

Yang stems run forward, so the cell after Establishment is Peak one branch on; Yin stems run in reverse, so the cell after Establishment lies the other way. The result is that for the two stems of one element, Establishment and Peak are swapped:

When the book writes about the emolument of Yin Metal it uses a very concrete seasonal picture:

The eighth month is where Yin Metal builds its emolument. In that month the air turns stern, white dew becomes frost, and grass and trees turn yellow and fade.

The Establishment of Yin Metal is Rooster, and the Rooster month is the eighth lunar month, with white dew turning to frost; the book borrows the season to picture Yin Metal at its own post. It is an image for the stem Yin Metal, not a verdict on any person.

When the month branch is the post: Build Emolument

Put the Establishment position on the month branch and it gets a new name. The Yuanhai Ziping (渊海子平) has a line:

Build Emolument is born in the month, so wealth and officers like to show on the stems; the self need not be stronger still, and rich sources of wealth are welcome.

The "month" here is the month branch. The line is about patterns: a Day Master born in its own Establishment month is said to build emolument, and the book goes on to discuss what suits it and what to avoid. That belongs to pattern reading; here it is enough to keep apart the two things: Establishment is a position in the table, and Build Emolument is "the month branch happens to be that position".

The cell before is Coming of Age and the next is Peak; the full table of twelve is in the twelve life stages and void branches.