Kuigang Four Days and Five Days: Formation and Meaning

In Chinese metaphysics, 魁罡 is treated as a class of day-pillar combinations named by the stem and branch of the day pillar itself. The identification depends only on the day pillar; seeing the same stem-branch pair in the year, month, or hour pillar does not count as 魁罡. Because the determination follows a direct comparison of the day pillar against a list, no separate calculation is required. The practical difficulty is that traditional sources do not all give the same list.

同一本书里的两处名单

《渊海子平》 contains two places where 魁罡 is discussed, and the two passages do not list exactly the same days. In the chapter treating 魁罡, the text names four days: 壬辰，庚戌，庚辰, and 戊戌. This is the list most often cited when 魁罡 is reduced to a fixed four-day set.

Elsewhere in the same book, the verse on 魁罡 mentions an additional day. The rhyming text brings in 壬戌 as well. It says that when 魁罡 appears repeatedly, the person holds great authority. It also says that for 庚戌 and 庚辰, one should avoid the officer star becoming conspicuous, while for 壬戌 and 壬辰, one should avoid the wealth star being connected. The verse thus treats 壬戌 as part of the same category rather than as an unrelated day.

四日之说的出处

The four-day account comes from the prose section of 《渊海子平》 that directly discusses 魁罡. That passage sets out 壬辰，庚戌，庚辰, and 戊戌 as the 魁罡 days. Because this is the most explicit enumeration in the book, later summaries sometimes present it as the sole standard. However, it is not the only statement about 魁罡 within the same source.

The four-day list has the advantage of being short and easy to quote. It is also the version that appears most often when a modern writer needs a definite answer. But the existence of another list in the same book means that even within one classical text, the category is not perfectly fixed.

诗诀中多出的一日

The verse section adds 壬戌. The wording does not present 壬戌 as a marginal case; it places 壬戌 alongside 壬辰 in a paired warning about the wealth star. The couplet also refers to 魁罡叠见, meaning that the category can appear more than once, and it associates such repetition with commanding authority.

This addition matters because it shows that the traditional material was not operating with a single closed four-item list. If the verse is taken seriously, then 壬戌 belongs to the same grouping as the other four days. If the prose list is taken as the only authority, then 壬戌 is excluded. Both positions can be found in later discussions, but the source itself contains both.

本站为何取并集而不取一家

On this point of disagreement, this site takes the union of the two lists. The five days treated as 魁罡 are therefore 壬辰，庚戌，庚辰，戊戌, and 壬戌. The relevant page notes which source supports which day, so the reader can see that four days come from the prose list and that 壬戌 comes from the verse.

The reason for taking the union is that 魁罡 is not a conclusion of good or bad fortune by itself. Classical fate texts do not give one uniform list, and treating any single enumeration as the only standard would itself be imprecise. When a traditional source offers two overlapping accounts, the safer editorial choice is to preserve the fuller range while documenting the difference.

A day pillar that falls outside this union is not treated as 魁罡 on this site. In particular, a day pillar that merely resembles one of the listed pairs, or that shares a stem or branch with one of them, is not included. The classification is by the exact stem-branch pair of the day pillar only.

这一分歧对查法的实际影响

For practical lookup, the disagreement concerns one day only: 壬戌. The four days 壬辰，庚戌，庚辰, and 戊戌 are recognized in both passages, so their status is not affected by which list one follows. A person with one of those four day pillars is counted as 魁罡 under either reading.

The day 壬戌 is the dividing case. Under the four-day standard, 壬戌 is not 魁罡. Under the verse, it is. Because this site uses the union of the two statements, 壬戌 is included. The page therefore gives a five-day result where some other references give four.

The lookup method remains simple in either case. One examines only the day pillar and compares it with the listed stem-branch pairs. No additional rule about the month, season, strength of the elements, or interaction with other pillars is used for the basic classification. The year, month, and hour pillars are irrelevant to whether the day counts as 魁罡, although they may be discussed separately in other parts of a reading.

Since 魁罡 is a category tied to the day pillar and not a fixed verdict, the inclusion or exclusion of 壬戌 should be understood as a matter of textual tradition rather than as a hidden technical rule. The site records the difference openly and chooses the broader list to avoid silently discarding one part of the same classical source.