The Six Relatives (六亲)
8 min read · XUANJI
What liuyao adds to a hexagram
A plain I Ching reading gives you a hexagram and some very old poetry. Six-line divination (六爻, liuyao) — systematised in the Han dynasty — bolts a working model onto it: every line gets a Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch, a Five-Phase element, a Six-Relative label, and a Six-Spirit. Suddenly you can ask not just "what is the situation" but "who is helping, what is blocking, and when does it resolve".
This is the method used by most professional Chinese diviners today, and it is the one this site implements.
The Five Phases generate the Six Relatives
Each hexagram belongs to a palace, and each palace has an element (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth) — the *palace element*. That element stands for you, the querent.
Every line also has its own element, derived from its branch. The relationship between the line's element and the palace element produces the Six Relatives:
- Same element → Brothers (兄弟): peers, competitors, siblings, rivals for the same resource.
- Line generates you → Parents (父母): documents, contracts, shelter, credentials, support, sometimes literally parents.
- You generate the line → Offspring (子孙): output, creativity, subordinates, children, medicine, whatever relieves pressure.
- You control the line → Wife/Wealth (妻财): money, possessions, and in relationship questions the partner.
- Line controls you → Officer/Ghost (官鬼): authority, obligations, illness, adversaries, and in career questions the job itself.
None of these is good or bad in the abstract. Brothers are fine when you need allies and fatal when you are bidding against them. The label only means something relative to the question.
Choosing the Useful God
The Useful God (用神) is the relative that represents your question. Get this wrong and the entire reading is about something else. The standard assignments:
- Money, salary, a debt, a purchase → Wife/Wealth
- A job, a promotion, a lawsuit, a boss, an illness → Officer/Ghost
- A contract, a document, a property deed, an exam result, a mentor → Parents
- A child, a creative project, health-recovery, a subordinate → Offspring
- A rival, a competitor, a partner in a joint venture → Brothers
- A relationship with a specific person → depends: a man asking about a woman traditionally uses Wife/Wealth; a woman asking about a man, Officer/Ghost
Name the Useful God out loud before you interpret anything. It is a decision, and it should be made from the question, not from the chart.
Reading strength: is the Useful God supported?
Once you have the Useful God, ask three questions in order.
1. Is it in the chart at all? If the Useful God's relative does not appear among the six lines, the matter is *absent* — often read as: there is nothing there yet, or you are asking about something that has not formed. (Some traditions then look at the hidden stems buried under each line.)
2. Is it strong? A Useful God is strong when it is supported by the month branch (月建) and day branch (日辰) — the most powerful forces in the chart, because they describe the environment the question sits in. A line matching the month's element is at its peak; a line the month controls is weak regardless of what else supports it.
3. What is acting on it? Moving lines act. A moving line that generates the Useful God is help arriving. A moving line that controls it is the obstacle. A moving line that clashes with it is disruption with a timing attached.
That is the core of a reading. Everything else — Six Spirits, void branches, hidden stems, three-combination locks — is refinement.
A worked example
Question: *"Will this contract be signed?"* Useful God = Parents (documents).
Suppose Parents appears on line 2, in a Wood element, and the month branch is Water. Water generates Wood, so Parents is strong — the document is real, it has institutional support behind it.
Now suppose line 5 is moving and its element is Metal. Metal controls Wood. The moving line above the Useful God is the obstacle — typically read as the counterparty's authority, or a superior who has reservations.
The answer is not simply "no". It is: the contract is favourably positioned in itself, but something at the level of authority is working against it, and it will be blocked while that line is active. When the moving line's influence passes, the block lifts and the contract can proceed.
That sentence — specific, structural, falsifiable — is what liuyao is for. A plain hexagram reading could not have said it.
What it cannot do
Liuyao is a model, not a window. It reads structure and timing out of a deliberately narrow set of variables, and it will produce a confident answer to any question you ask it, including badly-posed ones. The discipline that makes it useful is the same one that makes any analysis useful: name the question precisely, name the Useful God deliberately, and accept the answer when it arrives.
It also requires a correct chart. Palace element, branch assignments, hidden stems and the day/month branches all have to be right, or you are reading a well-formed answer to a different question.
Frequently asked
What are the Six Spirits?
A secondary layer: Azure Dragon, Vermilion Bird, Garter Snake, Hook Spirit, White Tiger, Black Tortoise — assigned to the six lines by the day's stem. They colour the *manner* of events (a negotiation vs. a confrontation) rather than the substance, and are usually read last.
Why does the day branch matter more than the moving lines?
Because the month and day branches describe the environment the question exists in, while moving lines describe what is acting within it. A Useful God that the month controls is weak no matter how many moving lines try to support it — the environment wins.
Is the "Wife/Wealth" label sexist?
It is a 2,000-year-old naming convention, and the character 妻财 (qi-cai) covers both "wife" and "wealth" because in the society that named it those were treated as one category of possession. Modern practitioners read it functionally: it means *what you control or acquire*. Use the label; ignore the etymology.