Da Liu Ren (大六壬 dà liù rén), the “Great Six Ren,” is the question-divination member of the 三式 (sān shì), the Three Cosmic Boards of Chinese metaphysics. Where a Ba Zi (八字 bāzì) chart maps the life you are born into, da liu ren answers a single, specific question cast at a single moment: it takes the day’s stem and branch and the hour, builds a board, and derives a three-step narrative that reads as past to present to outcome. Among the three boards it is the most precise instrument for “what will happen with this particular matter.”
Where da liu ren sits among the Three Cosmic Boards
The 三式 are three related but distinct arts. Tai Yi (太乙 tài yǐ) works at the scale of large cycles and long affairs. Qi Men Dun Jia (奇门遁甲 qí mén dùn jiǎ) reads terrain for action, the favourable directions and timings for doing something. Da liu ren is the diviner of the question: you bring a concrete matter, the moment fixes a board, and the board answers.
The name deserves a note. “Six Ren” points to the stem 壬 (rén), the yang water of the ten Heavenly Stems, which anchors the system’s cycle logic. Da liu ren should not be confused with 金口诀 (jīn kǒu jué), the “Golden Mouth Formula” — a related but separate divination method that is often mentioned alongside it. They are not the same system, and a reading built in one does not transfer to the other.
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.
Every da liu ren board is built on two rings, the 天地盘 (tiān dì pán), or Heaven and Earth Plates.
The Earth Plate (地盘 dì pán) is fixed. It carries the twelve Earthly Branches — 子丑寅卯辰巳午未申酉戌亥 — in their standard ring positions, and it never moves.
The Heaven Plate (天盘 tiān pán) rotates. The twelve branches sit on this turning ring, and the whole board is set by a single alignment: the Monthly General (月将 yuè jiàng) is placed over the hour branch of the question (占时 zhān shí). That one move fixes the Heaven Plate against the Earth Plate, and from there the rest of the board follows. You can read more in the Heaven and Earth Plates of Da Liu Ren.
The Monthly General and the Twelve Generals
The Monthly General is the Sun’s position among the twelve branches, judged by solar term (太阳过宫 tài yáng guò gōng). It advances one palace per solar-term pair, so it is set by the seasonal boundaries rather than the calendar month. Aligning that branch over the hour branch is the hinge of the whole method.
Riding the Heaven Plate are the Twelve Heavenly Generals (十二天将 shí èr tiān jiàng), each a category of affairs. In brief: 贵人 (guì rén, Noble — help, authority), 螣蛇 (téng shé, Snake — alarm, illusion), 朱雀 (zhū què, Vermilion Bird — news, documents, disputes), 六合 (liù hé, Liu He — union, marriage, negotiation), 勾陈 (gōu chén, Gou Chen — entanglement, land, delays), 青龙 (qīng lóng, Green Dragon — wealth, joy, promotion), 天空 (tiān kōng, Sky Void — emptiness, hollow words), 白虎 (bái hǔ, White Tiger — illness, roads, blood, speed), 太常 (tài cháng, Tai Chang — food, clothing, ordinary affairs), 玄武 (xuán wǔ, Xuan Wu — theft, loss, deception), 太阴 (tài yīn, Tai Yin — concealment, privacy, women), and 天后 (tiān hòu, Tian Hou — women, marriage, nurture). The Noble anchors the sequence, and the generals run forward or backward according to the day’s stem and whether the hour is counted as day or night. The full table lives in the Twelve Heavenly Generals.
The Four Lessons and the Three Transmissions
From the aligned plates, the board produces the Four Lessons (四课 sì kè). These are built from the day’s stem and branch read against the Heaven Plate — the stem’s lodged branch and the day branch each generate a pair — and each lesson carries its riding general and a controlling relationship to the day. Those relationships are what drive the next step.
That next step is the Three Transmissions (三传 sān chuán): 初传 (chū chuán, Initial), 中传 (zhōng chuán, Middle), and 末传 (mò chuán, Final). This is the dynamic heart of a reading, an arc rather than a single verdict — origin, turn, and settling; or cause, development, and result. The transmissions are found from the Four Lessons by the Nine Methods (九宗法 jiǔ zōng fǎ), applied in a fixed priority order beginning with 贼克法 (zéi kè fǎ), the search for a controlling relationship among the lessons. The method that resolves the board also names the whole pattern, its 课体 (kè tǐ), or course structure.
A working reading then picks the category symbol (类神 lèi shén) that stands for the matter — 青龙 for wealth, 白虎 for illness, 六合 for marriage, and so on — locates it in the lessons and transmissions, and reads its strength and its place in the arc. Note honestly that some of these tables, the solar-term-to-general mapping in particular, are held carefully in the practice and verified against classical sources before any board is trusted.
How it relates to your Ba Zi
Da liu ren and Ba Zi answer different questions. A Ba Zi chart is the fixed map you are born with, read across a lifetime; da liu ren is a question asked in a passing moment. In practice they complement each other — the chart tells you the terrain of your life, and a liu ren board tells you how one specific matter is likely to move. Reading a board still rests on the same stem-and-branch grammar you meet in Ba Zi.
If you are new to that grammar, the clearest place to start is your own chart. Plot it free with the Ba Zi calculator, get comfortable with the stems, branches, and elements, and the da liu ren board will read far less like a foreign alphabet when you come to it.
