Tai Fu: counted from the Horse palace

From the Horse palace, one place forward per hour

Tai Fu (台辅) looks only at the hour of birth. Put the Rat hour on the Horse palace, and each later hour moves it forward one palace, which completes the lap in twelve hours.

In the juan 2 verse for setting Tai Fu and Feng Gao (安台輔封訣), the line for Tai Fu is a single row:

Begin the Rat hour on the Horse palace and count forward to the birth hour to place it.

Open the full-size diagram

Comparison sketch: each column takes one hour and gives the branches of Feng Gao, Wen Qu and Tai Fu; the landings match iztro 2.6.0.

The three columns each take one hour and give the branches of Feng Gao (封诰), Wen Qu (文曲) and Tai Fu: at the Rat hour they are Tiger, Dragon and Horse; at the Horse hour (number 6) the three have moved six places together to Monkey, Dog and Rat; at the Rooster hour (number 9) they are Pig, Ox and Rabbit. Tai Fu's own twelve landings are below, the late Rat hour counting as Rat and staying on the Horse palace:

Feng Gao, Wen Qu, Tai Fu: a run two places apart

Feng Gao starts at the Tiger palace, Wen Qu at the Dragon palace and Tai Fu at the Horse palace: the three starting points are two places apart, and all three move one place forward each hour. So in any hour Wen Qu sits two places after Feng Gao and Tai Fu two places after Wen Qu, like beads on a string at equal spacing, and the whole string advances one place per hour.

Between Feng Gao and Tai Fu there are exactly four places, a trine pair in the three sides and four directions, and that layer is worked out in Feng Gao; Wen Qu's own rule is in Wen Qu.

One hour, six stars: four forward, two back

In the site's engine, six stars look only at the birth hour: Wen Chang (文昌), Wen Qu, Di Kong (地空), Di Jie (地劫), Tai Fu and Feng Gao. Setting their landings at the Rat and Horse hours side by side shows which go forward and which go back.

The four forward stars keep their mutual gaps for good: Tai Fu is two places after Wen Qu and seven places after Di Jie. Wen Chang and Di Kong, the backward ones, differ by one place, covered in Di Kong; their gap to any forward star changes by two each hour, which is the "one forward, one back" idea in Di Jie.

"Tai Fu" in the book: three ways of writing

Juan 3 has a line:

With Zuo Fu, You Bi and Wen Chang, one rises to the place of Tai Fu.

Here "reaching Tai Fu" is a rank phrase; in old officialdom the word often meant a chief minister, and it is used much as San Tai and Ba Zuo are; the juan 1 Rhapsody of Tai Wei has the same usage in a line about Kui and Yue traveling together and standing at the rank of Tai Fu. The book does not say whether these are the same thing as the star on a chart.

Juan 3 also has a pattern line that lists a string of stars, Kui, Yue, Chang, Qu and Lu Cun, adds a condition about malefic stars and clashes, and closes on the words "Tai Fu" plus a word for honor; the line is verdict territory, so it is left unparaphrased.

1. 1

   State the hour first

   Turn the clock time into a branch hour; the late Rat hour counts as the Rat hour.

2. 2

   Count from the Horse palace

   The Rat hour is on Horse and the count goes on to the birth hour: the Dragon hour on Dog, the Pig hour on Snake.

3. 3

   Then check the run

   Wen Qu should sit two places before Tai Fu and Feng Gao two places before Wen Qu.