Day spirit
Sī Mìng
Life Governor
An almanac describes traditional day-types. It cannot decide health, money, law, marriage or children. Burial, marriage and medical items on these pages are what a book states, never advice.
In the classical sources
為斗之中央故曰司命也
It is the middle of the Dipper, and so it is called Life Governor.
協紀辨方書 卷七
About this entry
司命 is eleventh, one of the yellow-path six, and its first-month branch is 戌. 曹震圭, in 協紀辨方書 卷七, links it to the trigram 乾 and to the sovereign who governs the birth and death of all things, and gives the names 天府 and 天符.
The 1741 editors set this aside and put 司命 at 子, where they say the Dipper's beam rests at the center of the sky. They add a general remark: the real 黃道 is the sun's yearly path, and a black path appears nowhere in the classics. The name concerns a place in their star map, and neither book says anything about a particular person's life.
Where this text comes from
The Chinese follows the Wikisource typed text of the Siku copy, under its CC BY-SA terms. Statements about the calculator describe its own rules, and modern practice is labeled as modern.
The English here is our own plain wording. Lists keep the items of the source.