What 子平 is
子平 (zǐ píng) is the name of the tradition that almost every BaZi reading comes from. It is the tradition 明命｜MING reads from.
It is not one book. It is a handful of classics that disagree in places. The useful thing a source can tell you is which book it lets decide what.
The name, and the move it marks
The method is named for 徐子平, credited around the Song dynasty with the change that defines it: reading a chart from the day stem rather than the year. Before that, the Tang tradition associated with 李虚中 read fate from the year of birth.
That sounds like bookkeeping and is not. A year pillar is shared by everyone born that year; the day pillar changes daily. Moving the reference point turned a calendar of cohorts into a reading of a person — which is why the method carries his name, and why your Day Master is the point every other character is measured from.
Not one book — a hierarchy
The classics are not a single scripture. They were written in different centuries, for different emphases, and they can be read against each other. So a method has to decide which text leads on which question. 明命｜MING’s answer is written down:
《子平真诠》 structure 格局 · 成败 · 清浊 · 有情无情
《滴天髓》 flow 气势 · 流通 · 生克制化 · 中和 — and breaks ties
《穷通宝鉴》 climate 调候 · 寒暖燥湿 — overrides only in the cold metal/water case
三命通会 · 渊海子平 · 神峰通考 · 千里命稿
breadth cross-referenced, never overriding
纳音 · 胎元 · 命宫 held out of the reasoning (纳音 feeds two leashed stars and a colour)Why publishing it is the point
Classical citation in this subject is usually decoration. Read around and you will find the same two or three famous titles quoted in support of almost anything — including claims the texts do not make. A citation that governs nothing proves nothing; it borrows authority and returns none.
The framework 明命｜MING is built on states the alternative in one line: the purpose is not to quote ancient texts ornamentally, but to preserve methodological discipline. A hierarchy does that, because it is a constraint on the reading rather than an ornament on it. If 《穷通宝鉴》 governs climate, then the climate judgement has to answer to it — and when climate is not extreme, it does not get to override the structure, however vivid the seasonal story would be.
Where each one actually enters a reading
The test of a hierarchy is whether it does any work. Here it maps onto the order the reading is computed in:
The month branch is established first as the 月令, the command. From it comes the structure — formed, broken, rescued, clear or muddied — and that whole vocabulary is 《子平真诠》’s. Then strength is judged, explicitly against what the structure needs rather than in the abstract. Then what the chart needs is selected in a fixed order, and 《穷通宝鉴》 sits at position three in it — able to override, but today in one case only — a metal or water chart in deep winter. When two routes still disagree, 《滴天髓》’s sense of flow is what breaks the tie.
So the hierarchy is not a bibliography. It is the reason the reading resolves the way it does, and the reason it can be argued with.
The fourth tier, and the leash
The fourth tier is real scholarship and is used as such — 《三命通会》 and its peers preserve categories, special cases and inherited material that the primary three do not cover. What they never do is overrule a structural judgement.
The same leash holds the decorative layers. The poetic names attached to each pillar, the conception and life palaces, the symbolic stars — all computed or available, none permitted into the reasoning about structure, strength or need. What 明命｜MING does not compute records each of those silences as a position.
What this page is not saying
Not that the classics agree. They do not, and the hierarchy exists precisely because they do not. Where they diverge, a method has to choose, and saying so is the honest part.
Not that older is truer. Age is not evidence. These texts are used because they are the disciplined ones, not because they are old.
Not that 子平 is the only school. It is the mainstream structural tradition; others read differently. This is a stated position, not a verdict on them.
Not that a citation settles anything. A quoted line supports a specific claim or it does not belong on the page — which is the standard this section holds itself to as well.
Where to go from here
The judgement this hierarchy exists to govern is what your chart actually needs — and its page states the school position this one grounds. For why two careful readers still differ, why two readings of the same chart disagree. The second classic in the hierarchy has its own page: 《滴天髓》in plain language.
Common questions
- What is 子平 (Ziping) BaZi?
- The name of the tradition most four-pillar reading descends from. It is credited to 徐子平, around the Song dynasty, for the move that defines it: reading a chart from the day stem rather than the year. Almost every modern BaZi reading is 子平 reading, whether or not it says so.
- Which classical texts does 明命｜MING actually use?
- Four in a stated order. 《子平真诠》 governs structure, and 《滴天髓》 governs flow and breaks ties. 《穷通宝鉴》 governs climate. In this version it overrides the others in one case only: a metal or water Day Master in deep winter, where warmth is what the chart needs. In high summer it adds weight but does not override. 《三命通会》 and its peers are reference breadth and never override the first three.
- Why publish a source hierarchy at all?
- Because a citation that governs nothing proves nothing. It is common to see the same two classics quoted in support of almost any claim. Saying which text governs which judgement turns a citation into something you can check — and something the reading has to obey.
- Is 子平 the only school of BaZi?
- No. 子平 is the mainstream structural tradition, and there are others that read charts differently. 明命｜MING follows this one and says so, which is a stated position rather than a claim that the others are wrong.