(2) Preferences and Taboos of the Five Elements - 2

When it comes to fortune - telling, talking about getting promoted and making a fortune sounds a bit petty. The scope of the four great auspicious signs is a bit broader. Fortune - telling is different from the theory of the Five Elements. Fortune - telling is like a physical examination, determining whether you have a good or bad fortune. This is just stating an answer. Whether you have a good temper and good self - cultivation is also an answer. It doesn't mention how to handle things more properly. To deal with them, it can't be solved by the Heavenly Stems (Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, etc.). We need to use the theory of the Five Elements. The Five Elements, which is also about the balance, the favorable elements, and the adjustment in fortune - telling, is an abstract way of presenting an answer about good and bad luck. If we talk about the favorable and unfavorable elements in the Five Elements, the scope is even broader. Since before the era of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, even when there were no shops on the streets, the four great auspicious signs already existed. As long as there were people and families, such situations would occur. So, what's the difference between the two? One focuses on stating the answer, and the other focuses on the process.

Then, historically speaking, during the era of the Three Sovereigns, the common people worshiped the heavens and gods, asking whether it would rain. Later, it became a bit more complicated, like asking about personal future, status, and so on. This way of representation is explained using the method of the Five Elements, and fortune - telling is one of these methods. So, the three must be combined, which is called the same origin of medicine, fortune - telling, and divination. Medicine means treating illnesses, fortune - telling means discussing good and bad luck, and divination means asking about only one thing. Their fundamental ideas are the same. Before the separation of health and wealth, they were integrated.

Now we can each speak in words that both sides can understand. Fortune-telling has a history of only over a thousand years, while traditional Chinese medicine has a history of over three thousand years. As for wealth and honor, well, there isn't much of that! But it's true that people do get sick. Now let's tell an interesting story: One can die, but one can't be poor! This is so realistic. Then, speaking from the perspective of medicine, when we talk about health, for ordinary people who don't have any important matters or big disasters befalling them, the first thing they care about is their health. They groan and complain all day long when they're sick, and even having money won't help! Health is related to the Five Elements, which is about medicine. Now, the Five Elements in medicine are different from those in fortune-telling. The good and bad luck, misfortunes and blessings in fortune-telling are calculated based on the interactions of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, which are the acquired Five Elements. For example, when it comes to making money, not everyone can make money. If some make money, there must be others who lose money. In an election, if someone is elected, there must be those who aren't.

Doctors are different. Doctors aim to ensure that people all over the world are healthy and don't get sick at all. Therefore, in traditional Chinese medicine, the Five - Elements theory emphasizes mutual generation, while in fortune - telling, the Five - Elements theory emphasizes mutual restraint. So, what is mutual generation? It doesn't rely on Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. Well, if you're concerned about your own health, can you calculate when your illness will be cured? This kind of calculation method is of low - level thinking. The highest - level approach is to prevent people from getting sick in the first place!

So, can fortune - telling tell when things will go well and when they will go badly for you? It's possible, but this is rather over - reaching. For example, according to the five - element theory in traditional medicine, currently, liver diseases are very common. In fortune - telling, there is no rule as to which of the five elements liver diseases belong to. It is the "Huangdi Neijing" that stipulates that the liver belongs to wood. Then, we can also use the five - element theory in fortune - telling. In this theory, the prosperity of the "Jia" element is at the "Yin" time and its decline is at the "Shen" time. If you have a liver disease in spring and only feel uncomfortable in the morning, which corresponds to the "Yin" and "Mao" times, according to the five - element theory in traditional medicine, it is a mild condition and not a big deal. If you have a liver disease in autumn and it flares up at three or five o'clock in the afternoon, then it is a serious condition because wood declines at the "Shen" time. Discussing this is about the result, not the cause. It doesn't mean that I don't want to get a liver disease. Once you already have a liver disease, this is about whether the disease will worsen or get a little better. This is a discussion about the result.

So, the preferences and taboos of the Five Elements include discussing causes. In fortune - telling, the Five Elements are often represented by Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, etc., but they don't have to be. The Five Elements can also be represented by the Six Qi, such as cold, warm, damp, and dry, just like sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy. For example, when we ask someone: "What kind of dishes do you like? What kind of flavors do you prefer?" It seems like idle talk, but this idle talk can immediately determine your health. As we all know, eating too much sweet food can cause swelling. Then those in the weight - loss business turn this into a business opportunity. How to gain weight? Don't eat sweet food, and so on. The medical theory of the Five Elements is more detailed. Suppose a whole family eats the same food. If there are ten people eating the same thing, their health conditions will be different. One may have a stomach problem, another may have a lung problem, and some may have no problems at all. Why do the same living conditions lead to different results? This is about the preferences and taboos of the Five Elements. Have you all thought about this question? Let me remind you. For instance, when you eat rice and your stomach digests it well. As common knowledge, blood vessels transport nutrients to various parts of the body. If we dig deeper, how are these nutrients transported? What nutrients should be sent to the liver, what should be used for hair growth, and what should be used for nail growth? If we want to look more beautiful, it's about the skin. If there are problems with the transportation channels, can your skin be in good condition? So, what are these channels? This is what I'm going to talk about today - the preferences and taboos of the Five Elements.

The transportation channels are not the so - called Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, nor the Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. Instead, they are the five flavors of sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty, and the five colors of red, yellow, blue, white, and black. That is another system. Based on the flavor you consume, it determines which direction the influence will go. For example, if you eat too much salty food, in the theory of the Five Elements, it belongs to water. In terms of physical health, it is related to the kidneys. If you eat too much salty food, your kidneys will have problems. So when it comes to our daily diet! We can't explain the details clearly. We just know there is an impact. However, simply explaining things in terms of the Five Elements, like the relationship between eating salty or sweet food, is not professional enough. Oh! I don't eat salty food. Does the theory of Yin - Yang and the Five Elements only involve saltiness? Of course, there are other ways. In fortune - telling, saltiness is associated with water, the direction is north, and the color is black. So I can suggest that you don't place your bed facing north and don't wear black clothes... and so on. This is what we say when there is really no other way. Now, let me be more specific. Just talking about saltiness is not enough. What is saltiness? Saltiness represents water.

Well, most people offer prayers at temples. Many people have asked me about fortune - telling matters, such as praying for wealth or marriage. They believe in gods! They say, "I offer prayers every day. Does it work?" Everyone is talking to the gods, but in fact, the gods don't hear them at all. It's just your sincere intention! Then how can you make the gods hear you? You need a channel! Someone asked me what to offer. For example, a few days ago, someone asked me. He was in great need of a sum of money, and he wanted to borrow money from his own future. Where is the "bank"? The "bank" is not in your home. It's in your life reserve.

So what kind of thing is money? It also belongs to the Five Elements. He then asked me, "What should I buy for the offering?" I said, "Chicken, duck meat, bananas, and apples. Sincerely speaking, they are all the same! They all have the Five Elements." Now, I'll give you a separate analogy. For example, we say that water is salty. Now, let's not talk about saltiness. Where can we find so many salty things?

The first type has seeds inside, and this represents water. For example, the seeds of a Nashi pear are very small. Since I'm not an expert and have little interest in fruits, I'm using it to represent water. According to *Wuxing Dayi* (The Great Treatise on the Five Elements), the Nashi pear represents water. Even if we don't talk about health, for instance, if the Day Master in one's Bazi is Earth, Earth restrains Water, and Water represents wealth. It's best if there is wealth in one's fate. If not, then one has to find Water! It's useless to bring tap water or mineral water. If you offer Nashi pears to the gods, this channel will be opened. This is about the preferences and taboos in the Five - Element theory. This is a pear with seeds.

The second type has a pit inside. For example, when we eat peaches, there is a pit inside! A very big pit. Well, it represents another type of the Five Elements!

The third type has a "house". It's not a real house outside. For example, an orange has a peel on the outside and seeds inside. Then there are two types of the Five Elements. So, the offerings, such as offering oranges, peaches, or pears, are different.

There is also a kind of fruit with awns and thorns. According to the shape of this fruit, it is classified into the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. For ordinary people, this classification of the five elements doesn't seem to have much meaning, but it is meaningful to those who study the theory of the five elements. Such a level of classification is not used in fortune - telling, but it is used in "The Great Treatise on the Five Elements". As you may have read in novels, it is said that there are a hundred dishes in front of the emperor. Anyway, it's no problem to say there are dozens of dishes. There is only one emperor! Why put so many dishes there? This is designed by the imperial astronomer for him. What kind of food you eat should cover all the five elements, and the arrangement of dishes in different directions also has certain regulations. Since the emperor has great power and has everything, he is only afraid of getting sick and dying. Only the imperial astronomer can handle this matter according to the theory of the five elements. So the emperor has a hundred dishes. Whether the emperor eats fruit or not is another matter. If there is a pear, it must be placed in the north. Since the emperor can't reach it, the eunuch will get it for him. Therefore, the daily life of noble families is completely calculated according to the theory of the five elements. Take a basin as an example. To make it easier for everyone to understand, let's still use the pear as an example. The pear belongs to water, and earth restrains water. So what kind of container or basin should be used to hold a pear? Earth is yellow, so of course, a yellow container cannot be used. A container of a color that doesn't restrain it should be used. Therefore, when it comes to increasing fortune, eliminating disasters, and showing respect and love, the preferences and taboos of the five elements should be considered.

Fortune-telling is done when problems have already occurred. Determining one's favorable and unfavorable elements in the Five - Element theory is done before problems arise. But does it guarantee success? At least it can reduce many disasters. All ancient emperors, including those of successive dynasties, believed very much in the theory of Yin and Yang and the Five Elements. The emperors of the Ming Dynasty believed in it the most. For example, take the current science of names. I'm not here to introduce how to calculate names for you, but to use the Ming Dynasty as an example. Everyone knows Zhu Hongwu, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty. His name has a "three - dot water" radical. His son, Zhu Di, has a "wood" radical. In the theory of the Five Elements, water nourishes wood, wood generates fire, and fire generates earth. For twelve generations of emperors, until the last one, Zhu Youjian, who belongs to the element of wood, that is, Emperor Chongzhen, who hanged himself. The more successful a person is, the more they believe in this. It's all about prevention in advance, not dealing with things after they happen. Well, this is about the favorable and unfavorable elements in the Five - Element theory. For people from good families with stable lives, discussing one's birth - chart and worshipping gods is called praying for blessings. Praying for peace is praying for blessings. This is what is meant by "healing fate, divination, and sacrifice". Sacrifice was the earliest form.

So based on this, along with colors, and in the past twenty years, jade has been in fashion! People wear pieces of jade, crystals, etc., believing they have energy, which is the energy mentioned in science. Well, not to mention nowadays! Even in ancient times, there were such sayings. In ancient times, the Five Elements were also used. So, for these red, yellow, green, black, and white jade stones, each type has its corresponding Five Elements. Therefore, the list of preferences and taboos of the Five Elements is presented after the list of preferences and taboos of the Heavenly Stems. That is to say, it is provided for all of you. To prevent things from happening when there is no trouble, you can use the method of the Five Elements, not necessarily relying on the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. In this way, it can fulfill everyone's wishes. Fortune - telling to seek a wife, wealth, and official salary is not a very troublesome thing. The troublesome thing is not money. In my life, I've felt that money is not that important. A very wealthy person may not have a son, and this is a difficult situation! For example, when a person is seriously ill, it's very difficult to keep him from dying. Everyone will die eventually. For instance, if someone only wants to争取 (I assume it's "strive for") three more days. Why? Because he wants to handle some post - death matters and give some instructions. Another example is when a person has a car accident and falls into a coma. His relatives come to ask: Can he wake up? Just five minutes of wakefulness can have a huge impact on his family. Such things cannot be predicted by fortune - telling. Instead, the method of the Five Elements should be used. So, what I'm talking about here is not the mainstream of fortune - telling, but it is definitely a problem that will be encountered in fortune - telling. Therefore, I'm introducing it to everyone. This is from "The Great Treatise on the Five Elements" and also includes "The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon".

Well, this belongs to the Five Elements. Let me just briefly talk about something a bit deeper than the likes and dislikes of the Five Elements, which is the classification of the Five Elements into Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang are not simply about day and night, nor about men and women. If any of you are Buddhists, you all know how to circumambulate the Buddha. You circumambulate from the right in a square path, and it's the same in all temples. Then, since it's about circumambulating the Buddha, why not just do it randomly? Why is there such a regulation? This also has to do with good and bad fortune, likes and dislikes, but it's not the likes and dislikes of the Five Elements, but the likes and dislikes of Yin and Yang. The likes and dislikes of Yin and Yang mean that things follow a generating cycle in the clockwise direction and a restraining cycle in the counter - clockwise direction. If you want peace in the world, you should follow the generating cycle in the clockwise direction. Even putting on clothes, whether you start from the left or the right makes a difference. When it comes to the generating cycle in the clockwise direction, I'm reminded of a funny analogy. I'm sure some of you play mahjong. How do you shuffle the mahjong tiles? Shuffling in the clockwise direction is different from shuffling in the counter - clockwise direction. You can tell a person's personality from the way they shuffle the tiles! So this is about the likes and dislikes of Yin and Yang. What follows is about the likes and dislikes of the Five Elements, and then the likes and dislikes of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. So, this concludes the part about likes and dislikes.

This isn't real fortune - telling. Instead, when it comes to fortune - telling, it definitely can't go beyond this scope. Because just talking about getting promoted and making a fortune only takes two sentences. Especially regarding "love and respect" (it might be a wrong term here, maybe you mean something else), which is related to family affairs. For example, for ordinary people, family affairs are very troublesome, including the relationship between husband and wife or between men and women! And "love and respect" is also one of the five - element patterns. So, people seek the so - called "peace when the family is in good order". Here, "peace when the family is in good order" refers to family affairs. Then, I'll give a general introduction to the preferences and taboos in terms of overall patterns, the ten gods, heavenly stems, climate adjustment, and the five elements. After this introduction, we'll return to the most common good and bad luck, blessings and misfortunes in fortune - telling. Now, what we're talking about is luck, and luck is a single unit.

As we all know, when it comes to whether one has good or bad luck, in the field of fortune - telling, there are two different views (well, they're not really different "factions"). I'd like to ask you all: Which is more important, one's fate or one's luck? It seems both are important. But if you have to choose one, which would it be? Let me give you an example. In the Qing Dynasty, if a child was born into the family of Prince Gong, there's no need to even calculate. That child would have a life of luxury and ease. He might not be good at anything, but he definitely had a good fate. This is a clear case of having a good fate. Now, let's take Zeng Guofan as an example. He went through so many life - and - death difficulties. His success during the Taiping Rebellion was due to luck. He wasn't born with a naturally good fate. So, how should we evaluate this? Is it a matter of good fate or good luck? In fortune - telling books, when not considering personal achievements, having a good fate comes first. It doesn't matter if you're a good - for - nothing. As long as you have a rich father, it's okay to be a member of the "strawberry generation" (a term for the younger generation who are seen as fragile). This is just a very common way of putting it. If we're talking about achievements, then we have to talk about luck! Many fortune - telling books, including Shen Xiaozhan's *The True Interpretation of Zi Ping*, emphasize the importance of luck. Without this favorable period of luck, an ordinary person can't rise up.

Since we're talking about fortune, we need to go into details. Having just one of the three - fortune, prosperity, and longevity - counts as being lucky. Now, this fortune can be divided into several aspects. As I briefly mentioned last time, the simplest way to analyze the fortune is to look at clashes and punishments, as well as the double - clashes and double - combinations between the major fortune and the eight characters of one's birth chart. The major fortune is different from the annual fortune. The annual fortune governs one year, while the major fortune governs ten years. It sounds like a long time, but how much of it is truly useful to a person? I think it's only from the age of thirty to sixty, which is just three steps of fortune. No matter how good the fortune is before the age of thirty, it doesn't really matter because one is still a child. Moreover, when it comes to fortune - telling, we should follow the natural law. Achieving success at a young age is not good; in fact, it's considered bad! Just like a flower that blooms early will wither early. Those who succeed in their twenties rarely last until the end because they achieve success too early. And how many people can be like Jiang Taigong (who achieved great success at an old age) and succeed after the age of sixty? That's achieving success too late. It's most appropriate to have good fortune during these thirty years. So, is this fortune about having good luck or bad luck?

However, fortune is inseparable from the passing years. For a period as long as ten years, it's impossible for you to have good luck every single year! Even if it's a streak of bad luck, it's also impossible to be unlucky throughout the whole ten years. So, conceptually, fortune is very important. When it comes to ordinary people, although we're talking about luck, for ordinary people, those who can have twenty years of good fortune are very few. As I've said before, there are only two or three such cases, while there are billions of people in the world! This fortune is the same as what we've just talked about regarding likes and dislikes. Because the sources of success and failure are different and are restricted by those conditions, it would be too long - winded to explain. Now, I'll talk about the passing years of fortune, which is both applicable to amateurs and is the actual operation in fortune - telling. In fact, the key lies in the passing years.

Speaking of this! Since you all started researching fortune-telling, I think it's been at least six months. I reminded you all at the very beginning that you must memorize the punishments, clashes, combinations, and unions, as well as the interactions between the ten gods. Especially for the annual luck, the focus is on the punishments, clashes, combinations, and unions. It is dynamic. Before I specifically talk about the annual luck, let me give an example. For instance, if the day master is of the metal element and the earthly branches form a triple combination of wood with Hai, Mao, and Wei, and metal restrains wood which represents wealth, this is called a triple combination of wealth. This is easy to understand. Since you have a triple combination of wealth, it means you have a wealth structure, which lasts for 45 years. Whether it starts from your childhood or until your old age, even if there are interruptions during these 45 years, it still accounts for a considerable proportion. This person probably won't lack money. But when it comes to the annual luck, it's different. Even with the same Hai, Mao, and Wei, and the same day master of the metal element, if there is a Mao in the major luck cycle, a Wei in the annual luck, and a Hai in the eight characters, forming a triple combination of wealth in this way, it only lasts for one year. That is, you will have good fortune in wealth only during this one year. For Hai, Mao, and Wei, no matter if Mao is in the eight characters, Wei is in the major luck cycle, and Hai is in the annual luck, or arranged in any other way, this is called a triple combination of wealth.

So when looking at the annual luck and the major cycles, it's not about the eight characters themselves. From the perspective of the annual luck, what's called the three - combinations, including the three - punishments and so on, are all analyzed separately. Of course, the year, month, day, and hour in the eight characters are separate, and they also have periods of prosperity and decline. When it comes to this, real eight - character examples will be cited later.