過三關 — The Six-Relations Method (六親命法)
The blind masters opened a reading with a demonstration: before discussing career or marriage they would tell you, cold, whether your parents were living, how many siblings you had and where you ranked, how many children and of which sex. The purpose was psychological — establish irrefutable accuracy on facts you already know, and trust is won for everything that follows. That opening is 過三關, passing the three gates: the parents gate (父母關), the siblings gate (兄弟關), and the children gate (子女關). The 为心易学 course teaches it as the application layer of palace-and-star reading.
Palaces and Stars 宮位與星
Every relative is read twice — through a palace (宮, the position that is their house) and through a star (星, the ten-god that is the person). The palace map:
- Parent palaces: year and month. The year pillar carries the grandparents' generation; the month pillar doubles as both the sibling palace and a parent palace — the parents are the hardest-working pillar, caring for the elders above and the siblings below.
- Sibling palace (比劫宮): the month pillar — the great household the Day Master branched out from, so siblings hold a share of it.
- Spouse palace (夫妻宮): the day branch alone, read as the Day Master's own lower body — spouse and self are one conjoined fate-body, which is why only the seat is read.
- Children palace (子女宮): the hour pillar — also the register of one's old age, since a child who fares well bears on the Day Master's late years.
The stars: 印 is the parents (the course splits 父 from 母 by which resource roots where); 比劫 is siblings (same yin-yang polarity reads as same sex, opposite as the other); the spouse star is 財 for a male chart and 官 for a female (with 食傷/財 fallbacks when the primary is absent — though the course flags that locating a marriage date uses a fuller method taught later); the children star is 食傷 for a female chart and 官殺 for a male. When a relative's star is missing entirely, the character sitting in that relative's palace stands in for the star.
Disambiguating the Star 找星
When several candidate stars appear — four 辛 metals for one husband, two 印 for the parents — the course resolves it with two tools already taught: 寻根基 (whose root does the star grow from — the one most tied to the Day Master is the true relative) and 優先級別 (home precedence — a star already seated in the day or hour outranks one merely projected onto the stems). Multiple 印 around a single 財, all interacting, says the father had several women; multiple 財 around a single 印 says the mother had several men — and 找關係 then identifies which one produced the native.
The Five Palace-Star Relations 宮星關係
The relative's life-quality is read from how their palace treats their star:
- 宮剋星 — the house attacks its occupant: the relative is uncomfortable there, prone to illness, must leave to survive. A Day Master sitting in a year/month palace under heavy 刑沖剋害 is the adoption signature — the child could not be raised there.
- 星剋宮 — an intruder occupies the palace: a 七殺 in the sibling palace is an enemy in the house; a 比劫 in the spouse palace is a relationship calamity, since 比劫 strikes the 財 it should not.
- 宮生星 — the house nourishes its occupant: the relative lives comfortably, is healthy, long-lived.
- 星生宮 — the star feeds the palace it sits in: a male chart's 財 in the children palace means the wife greatly helps the children (she generates the 官殺 that are his children).
- 宮星正配 — the right star in its own palace (印 in a parent palace, 食傷 in the children palace, 財/官 in the spouse palace). A 偏 star in a 正 seat (a female chart seated on 七殺 rather than 正官) gives the persistent feeling that the partner is not quite hers. When star and palace are rightly matched and the star is then injured, the relative is injured with it — a male 正財 clashed at the seat reads as a wife in poor health.
克夫克妻 Rationalised 一個蘿蔔一個坑
The course meets the old 鐵掃把 ("iron broom") fear — the wife who buries her husband — with a modern reading rather than a curse. The 克夫 chart is typically 傷官-heavy (especially 傷官見官): she disparages partners and instinctively chooses a 軟柿子 (soft persimmon, a weak man) she can squeeze. One radish, one hole: if the man's own chart is frail, the marriage ends in his death; if she instead marries a 硬柿子 (a strong man she cannot squeeze), it ends in divorce — 非死即離 either way, not from sorcery but from the matching of two charts that cannot share a decade.
父母關 — The Parents Gate (Techniques 技法)
First fix the parent star by root and relationship, then read its condition. The course's highest-yield rules:
- 身弱用印, 財制印 — a weak Day Master needs its 印; wealth striking that 印 signals a parent's death (印 may stand for either parent — it is the protector).
- 身旺, 財官 in year/month = the father — a strong chart must control its 財官; doing so to a year-pillar 財官 often means inheriting money the year the father dies (發財 and 喪父 in the same motion).
- The 做功 character is the re-giving parent — whichever element does the chart's work (a 食傷 draining a strong Day Master, an 官 controlling it) stands as the parent; strike that working character in year/month and parent and native both meet calamity.
- 官殺混雜 early = no parents — a weak Day Master hit by mixed officers in the early pillars is a kill-or-be-killed configuration reading as the loss of one or both parents.
- 梟神奪食 in year/month — the owl (mother-seal) devouring the food god (early joy and nourishment) reads as the mother's death, fostering, or a thin maternal bond; a second 印 appearing later can mark the father's remarriage and a stepmother.
The course is candid that the parents gate is genuinely hard — a reader who lands 70–80% of parent-death calls is already excellent, so it should be offered as a likelihood, not pressed as certainty.
兄弟關 — The Siblings Gate
Palace first: who lives in the 比劫宮 grades the siblings (an 官殺 there — siblings unwell, ill-favoured; an 印 — siblings with patrons; a 財 — siblings with money), and where the 比劫 star lands reads its effect (a 比劫 in the spouse palace threatens the marriage; 暗合 to the home 財 means siblings or friends spending one's money). In the broadened modern reading, 比劫 with a blood tie are siblings and without one are colleagues and close friends.
The headline technique is only-child detection (獨生子女): a weak Day Master with no 比劫 and an hour-pillar 官; a month-command officer controlling the 比劫 while the Day Master itself is rootless; or a 專旺-family chart (one-element dominance, water-floats-wood, fire-refines-metal) — in each the chart can barely sustain itself, so siblings cannot stand. Otherwise the month command gives a rough sibling count — but the course is explicit that its count table is calibrated to the post-one-child-policy generations (80后/90后 onward) and fails for earlier births, and that the precise blind-master 順藤摸瓜 algorithm — which fixes each sibling exactly via the 長生 positions — is acknowledged but deliberately not taught here. Its real purpose was always the opening 震懾, not the substance of the reading. (Source: 为心易学 盲派八字課程 第四十八至五十課 — 「六親命法之一，過三關」、「過三關，父母關」、「過三關，兄弟關」)