Useful spirit
Definition
The useful spirit is the line that represents the matter being asked. The six relatives give five categories; the useful spirit is the one chosen from them:
- Wealth, income: wealth as useful spirit.
- Career, position, pressure: officer as useful spirit.
- Documents, elders, property: parents as useful spirit.
- Peers, partners, rivalry: brothers as useful spirit.
- Children, subordinates, rest: offspring as useful spirit.
After choosing it
- Check whether it appears on the chart at all. If not, the tradition calls it hidden, and the line it hides under matters.
- Read its relation to Shi and Ying; Shi is the asker's side.
- Measure strength against the month and day markers.
- If there are moving lines, see whether each one generates, controls, combines with or clashes the useful spirit.
- Only then open that line's text — useful spirit on the fifth line means reading that hexagram's fifth-line chapter.
Boundaries
- Choosing the useful spirit is a judgement, not a lookup. The same question can yield different choices (is "this relationship" wealth or the Ying line?), which is the main reason Liu Yao readings disagree.
- This page gives the order of operations, not outcomes.
- The useful-spirit system is later practice; the classic has no such field.