Strength and interactions
Three Punishments (San Xing)
By Vi Nhật Sơn · Updated
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Three Punishments (San Xing) — what is it? Three Punishments: a line is punished when the matching lines of a punishment group appear at a moving line, at the Day, or at the changed line.
The Three Punishments is a fine notion, broad in application for filling out the information, and often met with; it signals that the road ahead is hard, and if a person is punished, they will have a hidden defect or a concealed scar. The difference with Strength is that if it is Prosperous the thing is there but does no great harm, while if it is Weak it is surely dangerous to oneself. In practice it is the same with the matters around us: it signals whether we are doing something that is not above board or not clean, and to avoid it one has to be upright, and so get out of it.
The punishment groups
As a concept, a line is punished when the matching lines of a punishment group appear at a moving line, at the Day, or at the changed line; the groups are as follows:
- Zi – Mao
- Chou – Chen
- Chou – Xu
- Yin – Si
- Yin – Shen
- Chen – Wei
- Si – Shen
- Wei – Xu
What punishment signals
Basically, a punished line (the Self line, the Target line and a moving line included) always signals hitches in the course of the matter connected with the punished line. If a line is Resting–Confined and punished at the Target line, the hitch is so great that the matter of concern will be spoilt; and if the Self line is Resting–Confined or Weak and punished, one should be careful, as one will get caught in the frameworks of rules within the matter asked about and come to grief — for example, in a company matter one gets caught by company regulations and is reprimanded; in an outside matter one should be careful of getting mixed up with the law and coming to harm.
Besides, the position of the punishment also supplies information in reading a hexagram. For example: the Day or the Month punishing the Target line means that hitches are happening at present from within the matter itself; a moving line punishing the Target line means the hitch is caused by factors whose identifying characteristics are those of that moving line; and with the changed line it is a factor from outside. The difference between a moving line and a changed line is that a moving line can be acted on by various means once it is established what the acting factor is, whereas a changed line cannot. So if the changed line controls the Target line, one should change direction at once, before the event happens.
Example:
| Parents | Xu Earth | Self | ||
| Siblings | Shen Metal | |||
| Officer line | Wu Fire | |||
| Parents | Chen Earth | Resp. | ||
| Wealth | Yin Wood | |||
| Offspring | Zi Water |
In this hexagram, if it is read on a Wei day, then Xu is punished. If it is read on a Mao day, then the Offspring line at Zi Water is punished; but remember the rule that what does not move is not considered, so if Offspring is not the Target line and is not a moving line either, we do not consider it.
The complete Three Punishments Yin – Si – Shen
Besides, if the Three Punishments Yin – Shen – Si are complete, then the matter asked about is certain to fail; and if it is the Self line, then one is certainly in danger. In this case one must change at once, and quickly, to avoid the harm.
Example: on a Geng Shen day, in the Mao month:
| Officer line | Yin Wood | |||||
| Wealth | Zi Water | Resp. | ||||
| Siblings | Xu Earth | |||||
| Siblings | Chen Earth | |||||
| Officer line | Yin Wood | Self | ○ | Siblings · Chou Earth | ||
| Wealth | Zi Water |
The Self line coincides with the Month and so counts as Prosperous; but because the Self line, together with the changed line and the Day, makes up the complete Three Punishments Yin – Si – Shen, the matter asked about is for that reason certain to be spoilt, and one's own life is in danger too.
This case holds for a moving line as well, that is, if the Opposing line is caught in the Three Punishments as above, it too will be powerless to control the Target line.
The factors that bring punishment
As to punishment, we have the following cases in which the factors of the hexagram act on a line by punishment:
- The Day punishing
- The Month punishing
- The changed line punishing
- A moving line punishing
- The Flying line punishing the Hidden line
Besides, in the case where there is no Target line and a Hidden line has to be taken, the Hidden line is still acted on by a moving line or by the Day and the Month, but not by the changed line.
With punishment, it always reports a hitch in the matter being aimed at. I remember once someone asked about keeping a dog, and the hexagram came out on a Mao day with the Target line, Offspring, at Zi; so I told them that this dog had an illness within it, and that taking it in like this, they should be careful it didn't infect the others. Three days later they reported that the dog had just died, of distemper. That was because the Offspring line was punished by the Day.
With punishment, we see that the basic factors making up a hexagram all act equally on the punished line.
Punishment and hidden defects
Punishment nearly always reports a situation with a hitch within the matter itself; asked about a person, the person has a hidden defect, and this defect may be visible, such as a blind eye or a scar ….., or it may lie in the mind. In practice, in all the situations where someone's Self line is punished, there have been certain psychological obsessions not yet resolved, whether hidden or showing. This differs from the situation of the Flying Serpent: although that too is a tangle in the mind, and stress, with the Flying Serpent those obsessions are at a lower layer, and at present the person is worn out mentally, sleeps badly, dreams wildly…. but it leaves no scar in the mind. That is the difference. Perhaps because in modern times, medically, hardly anyone has a physical hidden defect, or else scars such as vaccination marks are had by everyone and so don't count; and it may also be that industrial society leaves many scars in the mind, so that the expression of punishment in our time no longer lies on the physical side.
Success and failure under punishment, and how to face it
Punishment is close to the case of Clash and Harmony changing into each other, since we can't know the moment when the hitch will occur. In a hexagram where a punished line appears, the nature of it still turns a Resting line into a spoilt one, and the moment of timing still follows the usual way, at the clash or the own branch for a still line, or the clash or the combination for a moving line; or, in special situations, the timing corresponds only to the points within that state. But the hitches between the moment of asking and the moment the event is complete will not show as such small points. So with punishment we have to be careful over every little thing, and can't guard against it in the future.
Punishment is fairly simple: success or failure in a one-sided punishment is like Void, but without dividing into marks, namely:
- If the punished line is Prosperous, there are hitches but the final result is still a success
- If the punished line is Resting or below, then what one is doing is both troubled and leads to a final result that is spoilt. One note in this case: with the situation of Resting and punished, the matter asked about is not only spoilt but also gets caught up in the rules that govern that event — for example, in a social matter one gets caught up with the law, and if Rootless one may go to prison; in a company matter, with company regulations… According to the scale of the space of the event we judge what the danger here is.
In this situation there are the following ways of facing it:
- Give up the matter of concern
- If one is obliged to go on, the easiest thing is to find a backer with the characteristics of the Source line; for oneself, find the element that generates the Self line and so find the person
- Use indirect means, and at the nearest mark where one can get out, pull out at once
What has to be remembered in any form of intervention in the future is this: the nature of the thing is what matters most; every method of stimulus to change the future directly is not lasting, though it still gets us out of what is right in front of us. Take business as an example: if it enters the double Tomb, that is, enters the Tomb twice over, the matter asked about is spoilt; and then, if there is no way to change the business at once, we are obliged to intervene directly in the matter asked about, that is, to find a source of backing straight away. But this too does not arise from the nature of the thing, so it cannot be used for long; and when one is able to turn in another direction, one changes at once, if one wants it to last. This is like opening a restaurant where the cook is bad but heavy money is put into marketing: customers may be many at first, but it won't last, because nobody comes a second time, so that after the new customers there is nothing left. So the important thing for that place is to change the cook, not the marketing. After the first wave of new customers, once the necessary budget is in, find someone capable at once — that is the right road.
The complete Three Punishments: the punished line is lost outright
The special situations within punishment that tell us the time when the unpleasant things begin are the special timing situations such as Void, a moving line in Break, and the Tomb.
With the Three Punishments there is something special in this state, like Void in matters concerning people: the case where the three branches Yin – Si – Shen appear together within a chain interacting with one another. The punished line then counts as lost outright, whether it is the Source line, the Opposing line, the Target line, or even the Self line.
Example:
| Officer line | Yin Wood | Resp. | ||||
| Wealth | Zi Water | |||||
| Siblings | Xu Earth | |||||
| Siblings | Chou Earth | Self | ||||
| Officer line | Mao Wood | |||||
| Parents | Si Fire | ○ | Officer line · Yin Wood |
Read on a Shen day, we will not count this Parents line as combined, but will count this Parents line as having the complete Three Punishments, so the Parents line is lost. That moving line then no longer has the power to act on the other lines of the hexagram. So what if the moving line were the Source line? When this moving line is the Source line, the matter asked about is spoilt too, because the rule that runs through everything is always: if the Target line has a moving Source line but that Source line is spoilt, then the Target line counts as spoilt as well.
Rule: if the Target line has a moving Source line but that Source line is spoilt, then the Target line counts as spoilt as well, however Prosperous it is, except where another Source line moves and generates for it, or where a changed line generates for it.
So here a small question arises: if the Opposing line moves and the Hostile line also moves and generates for the Opposing line, and this Hostile line is spoilt, is this Opposing line usable? The answer is that this Opposing line is usable. Likewise, if the Self line falls on the Opposing line and the Hostile line moves but is spoilt, can this Opposing line still control the Target line? The answer is that it still can: as to function, the moving line still exists; but as to the nature of the Self line, it does not, and in this case we count the Self line as spoilt.
The situations in which the Three Punishments are complete
So as not to miss this special case of punishment, we list all the situations that can arise:
The Day and the Month with a line make up the complete Three Punishments, for example:
| Officer line | Mao Wood | |||
| Parents | Si Fire | |||
| Siblings | Wei Earth | Self | ||
| Siblings | Chou Earth | |||
| Officer line | Mao Wood | |||
| Parents | Si Fire | Resp. |
On a Shen day, in the Yin month, the Parents line at Si Fire together with the Day and the Month makes up the complete Three Punishments, so a matter of papers in this case will be spoilt, although the Parents line is by nature Prosperous, being generated by the Month.
A moving line together with the Day or the Month punishing, for example:
| Siblings | Mao Wood | Resp. | ||||
| Offspring | Si Fire | |||||
| Wealth | Wei Earth | |||||
| Wealth | Chen Earth | Self | ||||
| Siblings | Yin Wood | × | Siblings · Mao Wood | |||
| Parents | Zi Water |
Read on a Shen day, the Si Fire line then counts as having the complete Three Punishments and is spoilt. Note that only a moving line punishes a still line; there is no still line punishing a moving line.
A line in Hidden movement together with the Day or the Month punishing:
| Siblings | Mao Wood | Resp. | ||
| Offspring | Si Fire | |||
| Wealth | Wei Earth | |||
| Wealth | Chen Earth | Self | ||
| Siblings | Yin Wood | |||
| Parents | Zi Water |
On a Shen day, in the Zi month, the Siblings line at Yin Wood is in Hidden movement, and together with the Day makes up the complete Three Punishments with the Offspring line; in this case the Offspring line is lost, however Prosperous it is.
A moving line and the changed line punishing, for example:
| Parents | Xu Earth | Resp. | ||||
| Siblings | Shen Metal | × | Siblings · You Metal | |||
| Officer line | Wu Fire | |||||
| Parents | Chou Earth | Self | ||||
| Wealth | Mao Wood | |||||
| Officer line | Si Fire | ○ | Wealth · Yin Wood |
In this case the Officer line at Si Fire, together with the moving line at Shen Metal and the changed line at Yin Wood, makes up the complete Three Punishments, and this Si Fire line then counts as lost. So does the Shen Metal line count as joining with Si Fire and Yin Wood to make the Three Punishments? It does not, because by the rule a changed line acts solely on the moving line that produced it, so this Yin has no power to interact with Shen Metal, and one branch is therefore missing for the Three Punishments to be complete. The same holds for the case of Hidden movement.
The Flying line together with the Day, the Month or another moving line making up the Three Punishments, for example:
| Offspring | You Metal | Resp. | ||
| Wealth | Hai Water | |||
| Siblings | Chou Earth | |||
| Siblings | Chen Earth | Self | ||
| Officer line | Yin Wood | |||
| Wealth | Zi Water |
Read on a Shen day, the Parents line hidden under the Officer line at Yin Wood joins with the Flying line and the Day to make up the Three Punishments, and the Parents line in this case counts as lost; the same holds for other cases with a moving line and the Month.
On the whole, failure caused by the complete Three Punishments is usually the worst of all kinds of failure, because then not only is the matter spoilt, but the matter asked about also drags in things on the side. And then, if the Self line is Weak, the possibility of going to prison remains, so we must always be on guard about punishment. If the Self line has the complete Three Punishments, or is Resting or Weak and punished, stop what you are doing absolutely, above all with the Three Punishments; because, to say it again, the most dangerous thing about the case of the Three Punishments is exactly that we can never grasp the time, except where the special timing points appear. If we are lucky and the special timing points do appear, then before the mark of timing we still have time to prepare to finish before the dangerous mark.
Surplus branch
Besides, if there is a surplus branch of punishment in the hexagram — that is, the changed line and the moving line are of the same branch and punish another line, for example Zi punishing Mao where the changed line is also Zi and the moving line is also Zi, which is called a surplus branch; or two Shen in the moving line and the changed line of Yin or of Si, which we call a surplus branch — then we absolutely do not count it as punishment but count it as an ordinary line. The same holds for combination. But this counts only in the case of lines within the hexagram; if they are not lines within the hexagram, we still count it as punishment even when all three appear at the Day, the Month and a line.
See also
- Combination and clash of lines, Three Harmonies frame
- Hidden line, Flying line
- Void, Timing
- Six Spirits — the Flying Serpent