Once the plates of a Da Liu Ren (大六壬 dà liù rén) board are set, a practitioner does not read the whole ring at once. Attention narrows to four small columns lifted out of the board: the four lessons (四课 sì kè). These four columns are where the abstract wheel of branches becomes a reading about a particular person asking a particular question. If you want to understand the four lessons of Da Liu Ren, the first thing to hold onto is that they are built entirely from two facts about the querent’s day — the day stem and the day branch — read against the turned Heaven Plate.
This article explains that construction in principle. It does not cast a dated board or claim a specific day yields specific lessons; that computation belongs to the engine. What follows is the logic every board obeys.
Where the four lessons sit in a board
A board begins with the two plates. The Earth Plate (地盘 dì pán) holds the twelve Earthly Branches fixed in their standard ring. The Heaven Plate (天盘 tiān pán) carries the same twelve branches on a ring that has been rotated so the Monthly General (月将 yuè jiàng) sits over the hour branch (占时 zhān shí). That single alignment fixes which Heaven-Plate branch now rests above each Earth-Plate branch. We cover that step in the Heaven and Earth Plates.
The four lessons are simply four “above” relationships pulled from that set board. Each lesson is a small stack: a base branch on the Earth Plate, and the branch sitting on top of it on the Heaven Plate. Read together, the four stacks describe the querent (the first two lessons) and the matter or environment (the second two). Each also carries the Heavenly General riding that Heaven-Plate branch, drawn from the Twelve Heavenly Generals (十二天将 shí èr tiān jiàng).
八字 · Four Pillars
Start with your own chart. Plot your Ba Zi free — exact solar-term accuracy, in your browser. The birth chart is where every reading begins.
>The day stem’s lodged branch and the first two lessons
A Heavenly Stem has no seat of its own on the branch ring, so it borrows one. The day stem (日干 rì gān) is assigned to a branch called its lodged palace (寄宫 jì gōng) — the branch on the Earth Plate where that stem “lodges.” The exact stem-to-branch assignment is a fixed classical table, one the practice verifies against a source rather than reconstructs from memory, so we describe the mechanism here rather than print the mapping.
With the lodged branch identified, the first two lessons follow directly:
First lesson (第一课 dì yī kè, 干阳课 gān yáng kè): find the day stem’s lodged branch on the Earth Plate, then read the Heaven-Plate branch sitting above it. That upper branch is the first lesson.
Second lesson (第二课 dì èr kè): take the Heaven-Plate branch you just found and treat it as a new base. Read the Heaven-Plate branch sitting above that. This lesson develops the first; it is the stem’s situation one step out.
Because they grow from the day stem, these first two lessons speak to the querent’s own side of the question.
The day branch and the second two lessons
The remaining two lessons are built the same way, but from the day branch (日支 rì zhī) — which already sits on the Earth Plate and needs no borrowed seat:
Third lesson (第三课 dì sān kè, 支阴课 zhī yīn kè): find the day branch on the Earth Plate, then read the Heaven-Plate branch above it.
Fourth lesson (第四课 dì sì kè): take that Heaven-Plate branch as a new base and read the branch above it, exactly as the second lesson extends the first.
So the four lessons are two matched pairs: stem side, then branch side, each a base and its extension. In Ba Zi (八字 bāzì) terms, the stem and branch of the day are already the querent’s Day Master and its seat; here the same two characters seed a moment’s board instead of a life’s chart. If the stem and branch relationship is unfamiliar, the stems and branches pillar page lays out the alphabet.
Sheng ke and zei ke: the relationships that drive what comes next
A stack of four columns is not yet a reading. What gives the four lessons their force is the productive-or-controlling relationship (生克 shēng kè) between each lesson and the day. Read through the Five Elements, one branch may generate, control, or be controlled by the day stem.
Two relationships matter most for what happens next. When the day stem controls the branch above it, that is 克 (kè). When the branch above controls, or presses down on, the day stem, that is 贼 (zéi), taken as the sharper, more urgent relationship. Together these are the 贼克 (zéi kè) relationships, and they are read across all four lessons.
The point of naming them is not judgement in isolation. These 贼克 relationships are the seed the board uses to find its dynamic core. Where a lesson shows the branch controlling the stem, or the stem controlling the branch, the board has a starting thread to pull.
From four lessons to three transmissions
The four lessons are the still frame; the movement comes next. Scanning the lessons for a 贼 or 克 relationship is the first of the classical selection rules, and it seeds the first of the Three Transmissions (三传 sān chuán) — the past, present, and outcome arc that carries the actual answer. When no clean relationship appears, other rules take over in a set priority; the whole pattern that results is named as a course structure (课体 kè tǐ). For the wider frame of how the plates, generals, and lessons fit together, start with what Da Liu Ren is.
Da Liu Ren answers a question cast at a moment; Ba Zi maps the destiny you were born into. Both begin from the same day stem and branch. To see those two characters as the ground of your own chart, plot it free with the Ba Zi calculator and read your Day Master before you read a single moment.
