Dear Master Lee,

Greetings to you.

Earlier, I used your online Bazi calculator to generate my sister's chart and found the time pillar puzzling. I found out that her Day Master is Yi Wood while she was born at 11:23pm at night.

(DOB: 2nd December 1987)

I bought a Bazi book weeks back and according to it, the birth time after 11pm to 12amis Night Rat Hour (Wan Zi shi). And if the Day is a Yi Wood day, the Hour pillar should beWu Zibut your calculator I utilised gave the time pillar as Bing Zi which is the Early Rat Hour(Zao Zi shi)- 12am to 1 am-for a Yi Wood day.

Could you kindly assist in soving the difference?

Thank You.

Sincerely,

MJ

Dear MJ,

 

MJ H. wrote:
I bought a Bazi book weeks back and according to it, the birth time after 11pm to 12amis Night Rat Hour (Wan Zi shi). And if the Day is a Yi Wood day, the Hour pillar should beWu Zibut your calculator I utilised gave the time pillar as Bing Zi which is the Early Rat Hour(Zao Zi shi)- 12am to 1 am-for a Yi Wood day.

 

 

MJ H. wrote:
Could you kindly assist in soving the difference?

 

 

This is one of the many variations in different concepts available in Feng Shui by different practitioner/masters.

 

One chinese hour by default is actually Two (2) western hours.

Rat hour happens tovspan between 11-11.59pm and 12am-12.59am.

So some modern practitioners, believe it should be broken up into Late Rat and Early Rat. And therefore, they added a modification to the original concept, believing this will solve the late/morning rat.

 

 

However, we find this to be a flawed concept.

 

 

The reason is because lets take 14/15 Nov 2008 as an example:-

 

 

• a) 14 Nov 12am-12.59am is already considered the early morning of the 14 Nov.
  
• b) 14 Nov 11pm-11.59pm is already considered the late evening of the 14 Nov.
  
• c) 15 Nov 12am-12.59am is the early morning of the 15 Nov.
  
• d) 15 Nov 11pm-11.59pm is the late evening of the 15 Nov.

 

The confusion here is that when we talk about 11pm-1am, it crosses between b) and c), so the reason why the modern practitioner feels there is a need to break it to early morning and late morning, is because they are refering to b) and c).

 

But don't forget, the day is already a new day for c). The Early / Late Hour is already being considered as you should be refering to a) and b) and c) and d). Meaning the day has to be of the same day.

 

 

Those that apply this concept, forgot, that the day is already broken up to the early and late zi. So there is really no need to further modify the concept.

 

 

We must always focus that the Rat hour spans between two dates. But the correct way of assessing that Hour,is the hour represents the time of the day for the same day:-

 

 

• 
  
• a) 14 Nov 12am-12.59am is already considered the early morning of the 14 Nov.
  
• b) 14 Nov 11pm-11.59pm is already considered the late evening of the 14 Nov.

If you do it that way, it is exactly the same as what the modern practitioners did of breaking the hour into early or late morning.

But they are only applying a 2nd division if you do so.

Thus, we find it a very flawed variation in the ba zi concept.

 

Furthermore, by further breaking the hour into Early/Late Rat, instead of having 12 equally divided chinese hours, you now have 11 equally divided chinese hours and 1 chinese hour that is specially broken down into 1/2 a chinese hour.

 

This actually will break the original concept of the ba zi which is based on the 12 earthly branch and 10 heavenly stem.

 

 

So technically, this is incorrect and will only break the cycle of the 12 hours that ba zi was originally designed for. Thus, it is not recommended to do so.

 

In fact there are a lot of varations for even the same concept.

As a newbie to feng shui, you can easily get confused if you do not understand the reason behind it.

For this reason, I have recently added a Ba Zi FAQ that hopes to cover most of the common questions about the Ba Zi.

URL: http://forum.geomancy.net/phpforum/article.php?bid=2&fid=2&mid=23906&new=

 

Almost, all our concepts that is available on our website has been carefully reviewed.

 

We had also already done a lot of pros and cons evaluations of the various variations in the differentconcepts.

 

Thus, the tools we have on our website is based on best practices and most technically correct.

 

So the tools will work properly together to give the best overall analysis.

 

There is often no need to make any further modification to any results from our website.

 

 

Warmest Regards
Robert Lee
GEOMANCY.NET - Center for Applied Feng Shui Research