What the five areas actually read — each method looks somewhere different
updated · 6 min read
Opening a method's tile on the result screen gives the overall current, the people around you, work, love and home. Five for each of nine methods means forty-five passages in a single reading.
What each method produces, though, is one set of material per person. Three pillars in the Four Pillars, two stars in Nine Star Ki. Dividing that into five is done by changing where you look.
Choosing the part of a method that suits an area
The Four Pillars has three pillars: year, month and day. Traditionally the year is family line and how society sees you, the month work and where you stand, the day yourself and those closest to you.
Those traditional parts are used as they are to decide which pillar an area reads. Work takes the month pillar; home and people take the year; the overall current and love take the day.
| Area | Four Pillars | Name strokes | Nine Star Ki |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | Day pillar | Total number | Principal star |
| People | Year pillar | Personality number | Principal star |
| Work | Month pillar | Personality number | Principal star |
| Love | Day pillar | Earth number | Monthly star |
| Home | Year pillar | Heaven number | Monthly star |
The name reading works the same way. Heaven is the family line, personality the centre of character, earth what you were born with, total the whole of a life. The area decides which number is read.
In Nine Star Ki the principal star is taken to show the nature carried through life and the monthly star the inner side and dealings with those close by. So love and home read the monthly star and the rest the principal.
The cards divide by position
Card methods have no divisions like pillars or numbers. Instead the areas divide by which drawn card is read. The oracle cards and Lenormand, drawn in threes, assign an area to each position.
| Area | Oracle (where you are / how it moves / what lights the way) | Lenormand (centre / what moves it / where it goes) |
|---|---|---|
| Overall | Where you are | Centre |
| People | What lights the way | What moves it |
| Work | How it moves | What moves it |
| Love | How it moves | Where it goes |
| Home | Where you are | Where it goes |
People reads the oracle position of what lights the way because that position is the advice. In dealings with people, a hint about how to behave is more use than a description of the situation.
Which area reads which part is fixed in advance. The same reading is read from the same angle however many times it is opened. Nothing shuffles on reopening.
Some methods have only one piece of material
The life path number, the present hexagram of the I Ching and the Sun sign each give one result per person. There is nothing to divide, as pillars or positions divide.
For those, the same single quality is applied from a different angle in each area. The sign does not change; where it is applied does.
In astrology, the overall current reads it as the tilt of how you live, work as how you go about things, love as where you turn your heart. One core applied to five settings.
Having nothing to divide does not make the five identical. A different angle produces different advice.
Why divide at all
Collapsed into one general fortune, differences between areas disappear. Work going smoothly while company takes care is not unusual, and the moment it is collapsed, that difference flattens.
Divided, you can see what is running well and where to pay attention. If a reading is to be material for a judgement, that gives you more to work with.
The five areas also switch across four points in time — today, tomorrow, a month out and three months out. Five by four is twenty, and across nine methods that is up to a hundred and eighty passages prepared.
None of those hundred and eighty uses AI. Whichever area and period you open, the text comes from a prepared procedure. AI is called once only, to produce the overall reading at the end.
Common questions
- Why do the areas say different things?
- Because they read different parts. The same person holds themselves differently at work and at home. The difference itself reads as a stretch where that gap is showing.
- Can I see areas other than these five, such as money?
- At present only the five. Money is not covered. The oracle decks by subject offer five subjects including wellbeing.
- Does switching the period redraw the cards?
- It does not. The same cards remain, and the text switches to suit that period. Redrawing would break the consistency of one person's reading.