Six spirits

Definition

The six spirits (also six beasts) are Azure Dragon, Vermilion Bird, Hook, Coiling Snake, White Tiger and Black Tortoise. They do not change which relative a line is; they add a second layer of character — the flavour of the matter rather than its category.

Assignment

The spirits start from the day stem and run upward one per line from the bottom, cycling through six:

• Jia and Yi days: Azure Dragon on the first line.
• Bing and Ding days: Vermilion Bird.
• Wu days: Hook.
• Ji days: Coiling Snake.
• Geng and Xin days: White Tiger.
• Ren and Gui days: Black Tortoise.

The same hexagram and the same line therefore carry different spirits on different days. That is why a Liu Yao chart must record the day — see Month and day.

Use

• Fix the useful spirit by relative first, then read the spirit sitting on that line as a qualifier.
• Spirits never stand alone. Reading "White Tiger" as a conclusion, without the relative and its strength, turns an adjective into a fact.
• When a line moves, the spirit is usually read as describing the shape of the change, not its outcome.

Boundaries

• Six spirits belong to the charting layer; the classic has no such fields.
• Schools differ on what each spirit governs (speech versus documents, for instance). This page fixes only the starting rule.