r/chineseastrology

RW is usually a negative aspect but for some heavenly stems like Yi, they actually love RW (which would be the Jia Wood because they can climb over them so I've been taught) I've also heard that most Yang daymasters do not like RW much.

Which other daymasters welcomes RW?

In 1985 a reader wrote to the Singapore Monitor about a problem with their birth time. Born

during the Japanese occupation, the time on their birth certificate said 5.30pm. They wanted

to know whether that was Singapore time or Tokyo time.

It was Tokyo time. From February 1942 to September 1945, Singapore's public clocks ran on

Japanese imperial time, nine hours ahead of Greenwich instead of seven and a half. A time

written down in 1943 was written in a time zone that no longer exists. Anyone casting that

chart today with a calculator that reads "Singapore, UTC+8" and works backward gets an hour

and a half of error, from a record that looks perfectly clean.

That's an extreme case, and it's over. But the shape of it isn't rare, and it catches more

people than the 11pm day-pillar argument ever does.

When you cast a chart you're making a quiet assumption: that the time on paper is the time

the clock showed, and that the clock showed the legal time of that place on that date. Three

separate things can break that.

The first is the one everyone talks about — clock time against local solar time. A country

runs on one meridian; the sun doesn't. Correcting for it moves the hour pillar for anyone

born near the edge of a two-hour block. This one is well known by now, and most decent

calculators offer it.

The second is the one almost nobody flags, and it's the reason I'm writing this: the legal

time itself moved, and not always on the dates you'd expect.

China is the cleanest example, because it's recent and the dates are documented. The whole

country ran daylight saving from 1986 to 1991:

1986 May 4 – Sep 14

1987 Apr 12 – Sep 13

1988 Apr 10 – Sep 11

1989 Apr 16 – Sep 17

1990 Apr 15 – Sep 16

1991 Apr 14 – Sep 15

Then it stopped. Born in Shanghai in July 1988, the clock on the wall read an hour ahead of

standard time, and a chart that doesn't know it is drawn from a time the sun never kept.

Here's where the shortcut breaks. Plenty of calculators don't carry a real timezone history —

they infer the rule from the UTC offset they've been given. In 1990, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur

were both at UTC+8. China was running daylight saving that summer. Malaysia never has. So a

calculator keying off the offset alone will subtract an hour from a 1990 Kuala Lumpur birth

that never needed one. Half an hour is usually harmless. An hour sitting near a boundary is not.

Malaysia and Singapore are worth knowing for a second reason: the change is recent enough that

plenty of living people were born before it. The peninsula and Singapore ran on UTC+7:30 until

the end of 1981. On 1 January 1982 both moved thirty minutes forward, to line up with East

Malaysia. The Straits Times noted at the time that midnight would chime at what had been

11.30pm. So a chart for someone born in Kuala Lumpur in 1979 and one for their cousin born in

1985 sit on clocks half an hour apart — and a modern calculator will assume the same offset

for both of them.

The third thing isn't a rule at all. It's the record. "Around 3pm," rounded, written down years

later by someone who wasn't in the room. You can't correct that arithmetically. You can only

notice it, and treat the hour pillar as uncertain rather than settled.

I don't want to overstate what this costs. An hour pillar is one of four, and moving it doesn't

rewrite the chart. What it does touch: the pillar that carries your later years, the branch

that relates to children and to what you put out into the world, and — since the hour stem

interacts with everything above it — sometimes a Ten Gods label or two. It also moves which

luck pillar you're standing in, because those are counted off from the month.

For most people none of it matters. For someone born twenty minutes inside a boundary, on a

clock that was already offset, it decides which pillar they get.

You can check your own without any software. Find out whether your birth country ran daylight

saving in your birth year, and on what dates — most countries that ever ran it have a table

published somewhere. Then ask whether your birth date falls inside it. If it does, subtract the

hour, cast again, and read both. And if you were born somewhere that spent part of the last

century on another country's clock, check that too. A lot of places did.

If your time is a "probably" rather than a fact, say so when you post it. It isn't a hole in the

reading. It's the difference between a pillar you can stand on and one you're guessing at.

I'm curious how many people here have actually run this check on themselves. If you've cast

both ways and one version clearly fit better, I'd like to hear which way it landed — and whether

the time you'd been using was the time your country's clock was actually on.

I recently saw a question asking:

>When life is not going smoothly, people naturally want to find ways to improve their luck. There are so many “luck-enhancing” methods online — colors, objects, charms, Feng Shui adjustments, and so on. Which ones are actually worth taking seriously?

My own view is quite simple:

For ordinary people, the most practical way to improve “luck” is usually not through external objects, but through changing ourselves.

I do not completely reject things like wearing certain colors, carrying certain objects, or making small environmental adjustments. Within traditional metaphysical systems, these ideas may have their own logic.

But even if they work, I would regard them as secondary — more like icing on the cake.

If we are talking about long-term fortune, I think mindset, habits, judgment, and personal conduct matter much more.

For example:

• If you are easily irritated, learn to slow down before reacting.
• If you are too attached to gains and losses, reduce some of that greed and anxiety.
• If you tend to be overly harsh, cultivate more tolerance.
• When under pressure, improve your ability to learn, exercise, rest, and connect with other people.

In BaZi language, we often talk about things such as “using Resource to transform Seven Killings” (用印化杀) or “Output supported by Resource” (食伤佩印).

But when these ideas are brought back into real life, they often point toward very ordinary things:

wisdom, learning, empathy, discipline, and knowing how to act with proper measure.

Another thing I believe is important is to do more things that are genuinely beneficial to others and build good relationships.

I do not mean this in a transactional way:

>“I did one good deed today, so Heaven should reward me with good luck tomorrow.”

That is too calculating.

The real change is usually much more gradual.

If, over many years, you treat people with more kindness, become more trustworthy, help others when you reasonably can, and build good relationships, then your social environment and the opportunities around you will naturally change as well.

That alone can look very much like “better luck.”

There is one more point that I think matters:

Do not become obsessed with whether today is auspicious or inauspicious.

Life is not a collection of perfectly optimized individual days.

Whether one particular day goes smoothly is often much less important than whether your overall direction is right.

A “good life” is not something we calculate day by day.

It is something we gradually cultivate.

So if I had to summarize my own idea of improving fortune, I would say:

Cultivate the mind.
Cultivate your conduct.
Cultivate your abilities.
Reduce greed, resentment, and impulsiveness.
Learn more. Help more people. Build more good connections.
And develop some awareness of timing.

Other traditional “luck-enhancing” methods can be interesting to study and use as reference.

But I would not put the cart before the horse, and I would certainly not let them create more anxiety.

Sometimes, the best way to improve our “luck” is simply to become a slightly better version of ourselves.

— Kwang Muk(光睦), QuanBuFang(泉布坊)

I originally posted the wrong information!