The Utility of Date Selection in Geomancy

Date section is a major branch of applied Chinese Metaphysical Arts. However it is not exclusive to the Chinese. The Indians have their own date selection techniques based on the position of celestial bodies. Their calendar that is used for date selection is known as the vedic Panchangam. Interestingly this calendar is based on the 60 cycle that is oddly coincidental to the Chinese Ganzhi system.

Chinese date selection is an giant field of study with many competing systems and variations over time. The more popular date selection systems are listed below.

• Chinese Almanac (Tong Shu)
• Dong Gong date selection
• Eight Pillar (Bazi)
• Qi Men Dun Jia date selection
• Xuan Kong Da Gua date selection

While date selection may be deemed a complete tool itself for important activities, it brings up some questions regarding its role with geomancy.

1. Does it complement geomancy?
2. Can it operate independently of geomancy?
3. Does certain branch of geomancy require complementary date selection for activation?
4. How does date selection measure up against geomancy?

One observation of date selection is the tedious calculations that is required to plot various charts and tables before the selection rules are applied. Therefore most date selection specialists must at certain point of their study, be familiar with the mechanics of time, namely the equations of time.

A blog is hardly a place to delve into the depths of mechanics of equations of time, so we will try to avoid as much technical mathematical treatment of time and focus on the applications on date selections. To illustrate the point above, let us pick a date selection example and observe the applied mathematical computations involved.


In Xuan Kong Da Gua selection, the basic point is to match a Ganzhi date with the 64 hexagram of the Yi Jing and singularity is deemed auspicious. Let us illustrate this point with an example.

A Ganzhi instance in time is represented by stems and branches,

Gui Ren Ji Xin
Mao Wu Hai Mao

Mapping the stems and branches to the 64 hexagram of the Yi Jing and reducing them to the numerals, we have the following

8 2 2 2
7 1 2 3

We observe the upper numerals add up to 10. This is the Combination of 10 structure that is rather auspicious. A subject's birth year could be decomposed to a set of numerals to see whether there is any auspicious pattern for the point in time. In addition, a house facing or sitting direction could be mapped to a hexagram on a San Yuan Luo Pan and the same procedure is repeated again. The Georgian date that was used in this example is 23th November 2011, 6:00AM GMT+8 without using the solar time. The tedious factor is increased many folds when one has to pick an hour from months. Each day has 24 hours and there are 30/31 days (excluding February) in a month. This will give the reader a hint why Date Selection specialists are rare.

In this example, I have taken the liberty of mapping a Georgian date to the Chinese Ganzhi date system. Briefly this involves a series of calculations used to determine the pillars of a date. The explanations for the various steps will put most people to sleep.

Therefore we know date selection is a tedious task, the repercussions of selecting a date that is unfortunately bundled with a tragedy event makes date selection a difficult task. Suppose a customer used the 'auspicious' date and could not achieve the desired goal, questions will inevitably point to the utility of the date and the person who proposed it. The activity is usually a short time frame and any mishap will be instantly observed if not experienced.

Furthermore, the abundance of various date selection systems give rise to another question, will one date contradict another?

Stay tuned as we delve further into applied date selection's utility on Geomancy.