Decline: the first step past the peak

Decline: the first step down from the top

Peak is the summit and Decline is the first step off it. The sixth cell of the twelve life stages stands for exactly that position.

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Position sketch: the positions come from the site engine's twelve-stage table; the eight arcs are one step from the eight different Peak branches, since Yin Fire and Yin Earth share Snake and Yang Fire and Yang Earth share Horse.

The Sanming Tiyao (三命提要), kept in juan 2 of the Sanming Tonghui (三命通会), counts its entries from receiving qi; entry nine is Decline, a single plain line:

Decline: the forms of all things decay, like a person's energy ebbing.

The bodies of things wear down, as a person's strength ebbs. The cell follows Peak directly, so it is also the easiest one to find: look up Peak, then take one step in each stem's own direction.

The storehouses caught between two Peaks

The eight arcs in the figure start at eight Peak positions, take one step each, and all land on Ox, Dragon, Goat or Dog. Set each storehouse beside its two neighbors and the pattern shows:

The branch before a storehouse holds the Peak of a Yang stem, and the branch after it holds the Peak of a Yin stem. A Yang stem steps forward from its Peak into the storehouse and a Yin stem steps back into it, so the Day Masters standing in Decline there are exactly those of the two neighbors together. That also explains why ten Day Masters use only four branches: of the twelve, only Dragon, Dog, Ox and Goat are caught between Peak positions in this way.

In old texts, "decline" is sometimes a general word

Juan 3 of the Sanming Tonghui, explaining why Chinese characters are built as they are, uses "decline" once:

Fire declines at Dog, so the character that joins fire with the Dog sign means "to put out"; Metal declines at Ox, so the character that joins metal with the Ox sign means "to bolt shut".

The book is talking about character shapes: one character is built from fire and the Dog sign and means extinguishing, the other from metal and the Ox sign and means fastening and closing. Checked against the site's twelve-stage table:

Dog is the Storage of Yang Fire and Ox is the Storage of Yang Metal, so both "declines" in the book land on Storage. The lesson: the word in an old text is sometimes a general term for decay and does not always mean the sixth cell of the twelve stages. Before quoting, find out which cell it points to, and then check the site's table.

"Luck just entering the land of decline": two books, two wordings

The book also has a couplet about years and luck. The first half, "even when the year meets Coming of Age, some misfortune lingers", was read in the article on Coming of Age; in juan 2 of the Sanming Tonghui the second half runs:

Luck just entering the land of decline still wears a little fortune.

The rare character in the original is a variant of the one for "few". The line says that when luck has only just walked into the land of decline, it is still wearing a bit of fortune left over from the step before. The Yuanhai Ziping (渊海子平) has the same line with different words:

The books differ on "just entering" against "about to reach", one meaning already in and the other nearly there, and agree that at the handover something of the earlier step still clings. When you meet this line, check which book and which wording is being quoted.

Walking down from Peak: Decline is the first cell

Finally, join a whole stretch together. Yang Metal is a Yang stem with Peak at Rooster and runs forward; Yin Metal is a Yin stem with Peak at Monkey and runs in reverse:

After Decline comes Weakening, which is the subject of the next article, Weakening.

The cell before is Peak; to keep the stage Decline apart from a weak chart as a whole, see strong and weak Day Masters.