The Tai Wei Fu in plain words

The opening piece

The "Tai Wei Fu" sits at the very front of volume one of the *Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu*, an outline written in paired verses. It has two parts: a short opening on the attitude and order for reading a chart, followed by "examples", a long list of rules of thumb. Later in volume one there's also a "Supplement to the Tai Wei Fu", written by later hands in the same format, and volume three takes many of its lines and adds notes and examples.

It starts by admitting it's hard

Dou Shu is profound and subtle; its principles are hard to grasp. Even with a hundred chapters of questions, something is left unsaid.

The very first line says: this study is deep and fine-grained, its principles hard to explain, and a hundred chapters of questions and answers still can't cover it all. A book that opens by admitting it can't say everything sets an attitude worth learning: a chart is a language of observation, not an answer key.

Body and Life first

In general, Body and Life are the root of one's fortune, and one's origins add the means for hardship or success.

This is the most practical line in the whole piece. The Life Palace is the core of who you are, and the Body Palace is where you put more and more effort as life goes on; only reading the two together gives you "the root of one's fortune". "Origins" is usually explained as the innate foundation, such as the stem and branch of the birth year; "hardship or success" is whether the road runs through or gets stuck.

The same passage has the line "entering the temple is remarkable; losing its measure is hollow": a star in a position that suits it does well, and in the wrong position it's hollow. The brightness marked on charts later is exactly this distinction.

Good positions still need a close look

When stars reach Miao or Wang, look further at the play of support and restraint. When Life sits in a strong palace, examine closely what tempers and transforms it.

A star at Miao and Wang or a strong Life Palace is only a starting point; you still need to see whether the surrounding stars get along with it and whether anything holds it in check. It's the same principle as the San Fang Si Zheng in Chapter 1: to read one cell, never read only one cell.

The "Tai Wei Fu" goes on: "when the stars are helpful, even meeting the harsh is good; when the stars are harsh, meeting the harsh is harsh": with many helpful stars overall, one challenging star can be withstood; with many challenging stars overall, one more makes it harder. What matters is the whole, not any single star. The last line of the opening part makes the same point: "if one does not examine the workings, and forgets the changes, one is far from the creation of the numbers." If you don't look at how the stars interact and how they change, you're far from truly understanding.

The rules of thumb in the second half

Many of the lines under "examples" later became the names of patterns:

• "Sun and Moon most dislike being turned away; Lu and Ma most like galloping together": Tai Yang and Tai Yin lose most in positions where they don't shine; Lu Cun and Tian Ma echoing each other is best, which is Lu Ma Jiao Chi.
• "Zi Wei and Tian Fu depend entirely on the merit of Zuo Fu and You Bi": lead stars like Zi Wei and Tian Fu need Zuo Fu and You Bi's help to come into their own, like a manager needing capable assistants.
• "Tai Yang in Wu is called the sun bright at the height of heaven", "Tai Yin in Zi is called clear water and osmanthus blossom": names given to particular combinations, one the noonday sun, the other the clear moon deep in the night.

Some lines are very heavy, flatly asserting that certain combinations meet great trouble. Xingge doesn't read these literally: they're the ancients' descriptions of extreme cases, and today they're more like a reminder that "this combination carries a lot of pressure; take extra care".

How to use this piece

1. First find your Life and Body Palaces.
2. See whether the Life Palace's main stars are at Miao and Wang or at Xian, then see what helps and what restrains them in the San Fang Si Zheng.
3. Whenever you read a verdict from the classics, put it back into the whole chart; don't apply it to yourself on its own.