Libo

六壬

Da Liu Ren is one of the Three Rites, alongside Qi Men Dun Jia and Tai Yi Shen Shu, and the one with the most surviving literature. The Month General laid over the hour of the question fixes the heaven and earth plates; from these come the Four Lessons and the Three Transmissions, and the reading follows.

Interpretation leans heavily on classifying the lesson pattern. Seven hundred and twenty lessons and a large body of named patterns were worked out over the centuries, each standing for a typical situation. Much of the literature is taken up with deciding which pattern a case belongs to and where the exceptions lie, which is why Liu Ren has a steep entry.

How to read this branch

Get the mechanical process of casting and deriving the Three Transmissions solid before moving to patterns and spirits. Skipping the casting step makes the worked examples impossible to reproduce.

Charting guides