The Six Relatives: How Hexagram Lines Become Meaningful

The Problem Najia Didn’t Solve

If you have read the first article in this series, you know what Najia does: it assigns a Heavenly Stem and an Earthly Branch to each line of a hexagram, giving every line an element. That is substantial. A hexagram goes from mute pattern to labeled circuit board.

But here is what Najia alone cannot tell you: which line matters for your question. You have six lines, each with an element. If you are asking about your career, which one do you look at? If you are asking about money, which one? If your mother is ill, which line represents her? Najia gives you elements. It does not give you meaning.

The Six Relatives (六親, liù qīn) solve this. They are the system that maps each line’s element to a functional role—a role determined not by position (first line, second line) but by that line’s elemental relationship to the palace. The Bushi Zhengzong states the rule on the very first page of its instructional material, five phrases that encode the entire system:

生我者為父母
我生者為子孫
剋我者為官鬼
我剋者為妻財
比和者為兄弟

“What generates me is Parents. What I generate is Children. What controls me is Officials/Ghosts. What I control is Wife/Wealth. What is the same as me is Siblings.”

That is the entire derivation rule. Five sentences. No exceptions, no special cases. The “me” in these sentences is the palace element—the element of the palace to which the hexagram belongs. Compare each line’s branch element to the palace element, and you get one of five relationships. That relationship is the line’s Six Relative identity.

The Five Relationships

Let us be precise about what each relationship means, because the terms sound like family roles but function as analytical categories.

1. Parents (父母, fù mǔ)

Rule: The line’s element generates the palace element. Fire generates Earth, so in an Earth palace, Fire lines are Parents.

What it represents: Protection. Shelter. Authority figures who nurture. In practical divination: parents, grandparents, teachers, landlords, bosses (in their nurturing capacity), houses, vehicles, clothing, documents, contracts, official paperwork. The Bushi Zhengzong’s classification (用神分類定例第一) lists: “祖父母、交母之親友、牆城宅舍、舟車衣服、章奏文章”—ancestors, parents’ friends, walls and dwellings, boats and vehicles, clothing, memorials and documents.

The logic is generative: Parents produce the palace, just as parents produce you. A document “produces” your status. A house “produces” your shelter.

2. Siblings (兄弟, xiōng dì)

Rule: The line’s element is the same as the palace element. Earth line in an Earth palace = Sibling.

What it represents: Equals. Competitors. People at your level. Brothers, sisters, friends, business partners, rivals, fellow bidders, anyone who shares your position and therefore competes for the same resources. In financial questions, Siblings are bad—they represent money going out, because equals take from the same pool as you.

The logic is identity: same element, same status, same claim on resources. If you are asking about wealth and the Sibling line is active, someone is competing for or draining the money.

3. Children/Descendants (子孫, zǐ sūn)

Rule: The palace element generates the line’s element. Earth generates Metal, so in an Earth palace, Metal lines are Children.

What it represents: What you produce. What brings joy and relief. Children, grandchildren, students, subordinates in a benign sense, leisure, medicine, favorable weather, sun and moon and stars, domestic animals. The Bushi Zhengzong includes “禽鳥順風解憂遊禍”—birds, favorable wind, relief from worry, escape from calamity. Children lines are the universal good-news indicator.

But there is a critical nuance: Children lines control the Officials/Ghosts line (because what the palace generates controls what controls the palace). This means Children suppress career, authority, and official matters. If you are asking about a promotion and the Children line is active, it may be dissolving the very pressure that makes promotion possible. Good for health. Bad for ambition.

4. Wife/Wealth (妻財, qī cái)

Rule: The palace element controls the line’s element. Earth controls Water, so in an Earth palace, Water lines are Wife/Wealth.

What it represents: What you can command. What serves you. Wife, concubine, servants, money, valuables, inventory, commodities, clear weather. The Bushi Zhengzong says: “嫂與弟婦、妻妾、婢僕、物價錢財、珠寶金銀、倉庫錢糧”—sisters-in-law, wives, concubines, servants, prices, money, jewels, gold, silver, granaries.

The logic is dominance: what the palace controls, you control. Your wealth is what you have power over. Your spouse (in the traditional framework) is in the same category—a person whose resources you direct. For financial questions, this is the line you look at. Strong Wife/Wealth with good support = money coming. Weak or suppressed = money problems.

5. Officials/Ghosts (官鬼, guān guǐ)

Rule: The line’s element controls the palace element. Wood controls Earth, so in an Earth palace, Wood lines are Officials/Ghosts.

What it represents: What controls you. What exerts pressure. Government officials, the legal system, career authority, examinations, thunder and lightning, ghosts, thieves, illness (as an invasive force), enemies. The Bushi Zhengzong includes “功名官府、雷電鬼神、盜賊邪崇”—career and officialdom, thunder and lightning, ghosts and spirits, thieves and demons.

This is the line that makes people nervous, and it should. It represents the force that constrains you. But here is the thing that is easy to miss: for career questions, the Officials/Ghosts line IS your career. The force that controls you is your job. If you are asking “Will I get the promotion?” you need the Officials/Ghosts line to be strong, supported, and active. A weak Officials/Ghosts line when asking about career means there is no authority to promote you into. The pressure IS the opportunity.

The Complete Derivation Table

Here is the full mapping. The left column is the palace element (the “me”). The top row is the line’s branch element. The cell tells you the Six Relative.

Notice the pattern. Each row is a rotation of the same five-element cycle. That is not a coincidence—it is the structure. The Five Elements have exactly five possible relationships (generate, be generated by, control, be controlled by, same), and those five relationships map one-to-one onto the five Six Relatives. The system is closed and exhaustive. Every line must be one of the five. No line can be none.

Worked Example: Hexagram 17, Sui (隨), Following

Sui is Lake over Thunder—Dui (☱) above, Zhen (☳) below. It belongs to the Zhen palace (震宮), and its palace element is Wood. From the Najia article, we can assign the branches. Then we compare each branch element to Wood:

• Line 1: 庚子 (Geng-Zi) — Water. Water generates Wood → Parent (父母)
• Line 2: 庚寅 (Geng-Yin) — Wood. Same as palace → Sibling (兄弟)
• Line 3: 庚辰 (Geng-Chen) — Earth. Wood controls Earth → Wealth (妻財)
• Line 4: 丁未 (Ding-Wei) — Earth. Wood controls Earth → Wealth (妻財)
• Line 5: 丁酉 (Ding-You) — Metal. Metal controls Wood → Official/Ghost (官鬼)
• Line 6: 丁亥 (Ding-Hai) — Water. Water generates Wood → Parent (父母)

Now read the hexagram as a cast list. Two Parents (lines 1 and 6), one Sibling (line 2), two Wealth lines (lines 3 and 4), one Official (line 5). No Children line appears in the hexagram itself—Fire (what Wood generates) is missing. This is significant: a missing Six Relative means you must look for it as a hidden spirit (伏神), borrowed from the palace’s pure hexagram. But that is a topic for a later article.

The point here is what you can already do. If someone cast this hexagram asking about money, you look at lines 3 and 4—the Wealth lines. Are they supported by the day branch? By the month branch? Are they being generated or controlled by other moving lines? That is how you read a hexagram in Liu Yao. Not imagery. Not poetry. Element dynamics applied to functionally labeled lines.

Why Each Relative Matters for Different Questions

The Bushi Zhengzong’s first discourse in Volume 3 (用神分類定例第一) is entirely about this: which Six Relative do you focus on for which type of question? The term for this focal line is the Useful Spirit (用神, yòng shén)—the line whose strength or weakness answers your question. The mapping is:

This is what makes Six Relatives the functional heart of Liu Yao divination. Without them, Najia gives you a hexagram full of elements but no way to decide which elements are relevant. With them, you can look at any hexagram and immediately identify the one or two lines that answer the question. The rest of the lines become context—supporting, undermining, or interacting with the Useful Spirit.

The Generation and Control Chains

Once you understand the Six Relatives, you see that they form interlocking chains of generation and control. These chains are not decorative—they are the analytical engine:

• Parents generate Siblings (what generates me also generates my equals)
• Siblings generate Children (same as me, so generates what I generate)
• Children generate Wealth (what I produce enables what I control)
• Wealth generates Officials (what I control feeds the force that controls me)
• Officials generate Parents (the force that controls me produces what nurtures me)

And on the control side:

• Children control Officials (relief dissolves pressure)
• Officials control Siblings (authority suppresses equals)
• Siblings control Wealth (competition drains money)
• Wealth controls Parents (acquisition undermines shelter)
• Parents control Children (authority constrains freedom)

The Bushi Zhengzong’s fourth discourse (原神忌仇神論第四) builds the entire concept of supportive spirits (原神) and hostile spirits (忌神) from these chains. The supportive spirit is whatever generates your Useful Spirit. The hostile spirit is whatever controls it. This is not mysticism. It is a closed system of element interactions applied to labeled lines.

A Career Question, Read Through Six Relatives

Let us make this concrete. Someone casts Hexagram 17, Sui (隨), and asks: “Will I get promoted this quarter?”

Step 1: Identify the Useful Spirit. Career = Officials/Ghosts. In our worked example above, that is Line 5 (丁酉, Metal).

Step 2: Assess the Useful Spirit. Is 酉 Metal strong in the current month and day? Is it being generated by something (Earth lines, the day branch)? Is it being controlled by something (Fire)? Is it moving or static?

Step 3: Check the chain. The supportive spirit for Officials is Wealth (Wealth generates Officials). Lines 3 and 4 are both Wealth (Earth). Are they active? Are they supporting the Official line? The hostile spirit for Officials is Children (Children control Officials). No Children line appears in the cast hexagram—Fire is absent. That is actually favorable: nothing in the hexagram is directly suppressing the career line.

Step 4: Check the Subject line (世爻). Is the querent’s own position being supported? The Subject/Object lines (世應) were determined during the Najia process.

This is a sketch, not a complete reading. A full analysis would require the day branch, month branch, and any moving lines. But you can see the method: identify the relevant line by its Six Relative type, assess its strength, trace the support and opposition chains. That is Liu Yao.

What the Bushi Zhengzong Says Next

Volume 3 of the Bushi Zhengzong opens with the Useful Spirit classification (用神分類定例), then immediately moves into the Subject/Object and Useful Spirit relationship (世應論用神第二), the supportive and hostile spirits (原神忌仇神論第四), and the flying and hidden spirits (飛神伏神論第五). Every one of these concepts depends on the Six Relatives having been established first. You cannot identify a Useful Spirit without knowing which line is which Relative. You cannot find a hidden spirit without knowing which Relative is missing.

The Six Relatives are not an intermediate step. They are the interpretive lens. Everything before them (Najia, palace assignment) is preparation. Everything after them (Useful Spirit, line strength, timing) is application. The Six Relatives are where the hexagram acquires meaning—where six labeled elements become a story about your actual question.

What Comes Next

With Six Relatives established, you can now ask: which one is the Useful Spirit for my question? How strong is it? What supports it and what threatens it? Those questions lead to the Subject/Object lines, line strength assessment, and the day/month interactions that determine whether the reading is favorable. Each will be covered in the next articles in this series.

But all of them start here. The Six Relatives are the point where a hexagram stops being a diagram and starts being an answer.